The Descent
by oleanderclouds
Summary: He knew, now, that there had never been any possibility of forgoing him. The moment he'd first laid eyes on him, he'd been undone. Largely UnSub POV, where Reid finds himself, yet again, in the clutches of a very bad man. Slash; no pairing.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Property of Jeff Davis and CBS.

Set way back when, in season 2, some time after "Jones".

This came about from my fascination with Dr. Reid and how very victimizable (not a word, I know) he seems to be - mortal peril looks good on him like nothing else. Plus he's freaking adorkable and I want to eat him with whipped cream on the side.

Contains elements of slash and non-con.

**1**

It was the process that made it all worthwhile. The steps, the paces, the motions. The build-up to the point where he could take what was his.

He was careful not to lose himself too soon. Patience was golden during the days he could spend with the prize. He would remove himself from the basement altogether for hours at a time, to make it last, to make it as slow and sweet as it could possibly be.

The time upstairs was filled with a headiness of its own. The waiting, the staying. The beautiful agony of delayed gratification. If it became overwhelming he would settle by the computer and look at the live feed for a few minutes. No longer. He didn't watch the old recordings. That was for later, when the basement was cold and empty and waiting for its next inhabitant.

He had just started the process now. He had planned this one for less than a week. It had been hastier than usual, but no less organized. He knew what he was doing, perhaps better than ever. This one was special, after all. This one was unique.

Those who searched for him would assume he was losing his grip. He allowed himself a certain relish at the thought of their impotence. They would flail and thrash for a solution, they would panic and eventually, they would fail. At their feet he would leave the prize, the precious one, and his pleasure would deepen as he basked in their defeat.

This one would be better. This one would be perfect in so many, different ways.

But he had only just begun. The bulk of the process still before him, all the slowness still to come. Quite apart from the bonuses that this one brought, there was the prize itself, and that just wasn't to be contemplated right now. It was too early; he would not be consumed.

The moment he'd laid eyes on this one, he'd known the fates were rewarding him. It was destiny, this one, it was _his_ destiny. The universe was centring, convening around him with this most precious of gifts.

The research he'd done beforehand, the careful research he always did, had been too torturous. He'd been unable to satisfy himself with the recordings of the others. Instead he'd looked at the footage he'd taken of the new one, the special one, though it wasn't nearly as exciting as the old recordings. He'd watched as the new quarry went about his work, work he was already privy too. Watching him at night had been more satisfying. He'd sit in the car outside the hotel, where, by another stroke of luck, he'd had a near perfect view of the window.

Dr Spencer Reid didn't sleep much. He would spend much of the hours he and the rest of them were allotted for rest on the phone or lowered over books. He spread everything out on the bed, placing himself in the centre, bony legs folded awkwardly beneath him, back lazily hunched as he meditated over various volumes or maps or calculations. At night he abandoned his otherwise ever-present mug of coffee, but was still too restless to sleep. Outside his window, the predator watched, a small digital camcorder taking him just a little closer to his prey. One hand would inevitably come down to try and subdue his erection, but he never took his eyes off the prize. Tragically distant though they were, he drank in the details of his body and demeanor; the way he folded his hair behind his ears, the way his long, spindly hands expressed a myriad of thought and emotion, the way his full bottom lip shot out ever so slightly when he frowned at something he was reading. It took immense willpower not to spiral into thoughts of what he would do to that mouth, those hands.

He almost couldn't watch when he undressed for bed. It was a matter of removing his shirt and sometimes his pants before drawing the curtains, but it was more than enough to make the predator edge his free hand into his jeans and address his erection the only way possible. Once the curtains were drawn he would watch the shadows behind them as he swiftly exhausted his arousal, keeping fresh in his mind the image of a pale chest that tapered down to a drum-flat stomach and pronounced, statuesque hipbones. Pink nipples, a childlike absence of hair, the defined shoulders and slight muscle of a man but the lithe slimness of a youth. By the time the lights went out behind the curtains he was spent, breathing heavily as he cleaned himself up. He had to force his thoughts away from that achingly beautiful body on the cold concrete floor of the basement, that narrow back arching in pain, those pale nipples bitten to a swollen redness…

It was just as well that they moved him. By then he was all but done with the research, and his plans for commencing the process were nearly in place. The only thing left was the wait for the opportune moment.

They put him in the police station. He wasn't worried. He'd counted on their discretion, although certain it was no more than a precaution. The next day he was out and about, as usual, and as usual the predator followed him unnoticed. He was sure they had seen both the risks and advantages of bringing the doctor before they had even arrived in the city, but their precious profile told them he was not likely to become prey. Instinct alone had encouraged them to keep him just a little bit safer. Jason Gideon's instincts were an admirable force. Their threat to him was at most marginal, but they were not to be underestimated.

He had never been inclined to underestimate those who searched for him.

The days before he could start the process were agony. He was so close, so maddeningly close and still out of reach. The fourth day was monumental. He thought he would perish from the sheer pain of his need.

He knew it was an irrational move. Unnecessary and even dangerous. His longing was getting the better of him, but he couldn't say it wasn't part of the pleasure. Another added bonus. To sit right in front of them, within arm's reach, and see their blind eyes, hear their deaf questions. To sit before them on their own domains as an innocent man.

"Mr. Jones," he was greeted when the proper personnel finally had time for him. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting."

"Oh, that's okay," he replied, with a small smile of understanding. "I can imagine there's, uh, quite a lot to do…" He trailed off, flapping a pointless gesture with his hand. A little awkward, a bit nervous, not entirely sure how to act.

If there was anything he'd learned since the first boy all those years ago, it was discipline. When he had to be, he was in complete control of himself. It was how he had survived. If he was to be perfectly honest with himself, he was a mite anxious that Jason Gideon might detect something, but he doubted it. If he'd been there, in the cold little room, as a potential suspect, he would have been more concerned.

He could've met them on his own territory, but the allure of facing them on theirs was too sweet to resist. If he'd insisted they'd come to his house, he could probably have avoided Jason Gideon altogether.

Ulitmately, it was the chance to be in the same room as the prize that blinded him to the risks.

"I see you got some coffee," Gideon said pleasantly, referring to the paper cup in front of the predator. "I'm Special Agent Gideon." He shook the predator's hand over the table, used the other to put a number of manila folders on its scarred surface. "This is Dr Reid."

The painful ease with which he stayed in character was a fire in his veins. The doctor was disheveled and pale, his piano hands splayed like spiders over the additional folders he held in his arms. Lips flattened into an awkward smile, brown gaze clear and focused under drowsy, almost transparent lids. Clavicles jutting out from a shirt collar that was tilted by an ugly, lopsided tie. The predator shot him a fleeting glance, maybe a little curious about his age, before turning his full attention to the man who was obviously in charge. He didn't shake the doctor's hand.

"I understand you have some information," Gideon said as he began flipping through the pages of a file the doctor fumblingly handed him. "About the fourteenth of last month." Once he'd found the page he was looking for he turned his eyes on the predator. They were startling eyes. Hawk-like, seeming to flay the top layers off whatever they settled on. "The night Adam Morrison's body was found."

"Uh, that's right," the predator said, scratching his chin nervously. "I saw the news yesterday, about the van, and I remembered something. It's been over three weeks, so it's not real clear or anything, but I remember – I was walking my dog that night."

"What kind of dog is it?" Gideon interrupted, smiling politely. His eyes were unwavering, never moving from the predator's face.

"Uh, a Labrador, what – why d'you ask?"

Jason Gideon shook his head dismissively, still smiling. The predator understood that he was supposed to be unnerved, so he frowned and squirmed a little on the uncomfortable chair. Took a fidgeting sip of coffee. "Do, uh, d'you want me to go on?"

"Please," Gideon said.

He fed them his story, keeping his mask on with little effort. The false information would slow them down a fraction, send them in the wrong direction, but held in itself no strategic value. It was an excuse for him to be here. As he spoke, as Jason Gideon probed him with his easy questions and penetrating stare, he relished the feeling of the doctor's presence. He allowed himself, now that he was in complete control of himself, to think of him, his face, his body, his voice. Sometimes he would put in a question of his own, and the predator would imagine that voice whimpering, keening, pleading. He didn't look at the doctor more than he needed to, but when he did he registered every change in expression, every subtle shift in his features, every movement of his gorgeous hands. He imagined running his own hands over the length of that sinewy throat, imagined biting into that soft flesh, imagined that tumble-down mop of hair between his fingers.

Another small, unexpected pleasure was Jason Gideon's apparent obliviousness. It was a glorious feeling, letting his need wind through his thoughts unheard, unknown, while hawk eyes watched him. It was almost a shame that he would never know that he'd had his UnSub within arm's reach. It was a shame he'd never know these thoughts.

But he paced himself. Suppressed his arousal, ignored his need. He was burning, itching all over to reach across the table and take what was his, but his control was iron-clad. In time. In time, the process would begin. In time.

When he once again shook Jason Gideon's dry, cool hand he was feeling absurdly victorious. Smug. Gideon thanked him for his help, gave him a card and urged him to call if he remembered anything else, anything at all, about the van.

"God, I don't think I will," the predator said regretfully. "I just wish I could help more. It's so awful about those kids."

"There was no way for you to know who was driving that van," the doctor pointed out, a slight frown between his brows. The predator nodded heavily.

"Well, I'll keep my eyes open from now on."

* * *

Two whiteboards stood at an angle in the squad room. Both were nearly completely covered in scribbled notes and photographs. Bathing in pale dawn light, their collage of murder looked faded. Somehow unreal. The police station was in a state of subdued activity, the squad room itself simmering with the distant sounds of clicking computer keyboards and muttered conversation. Floating in from surrounding rooms, it witnessed of a very late shift that was drawing to a close.

The whiteboards stood in solitude. Pens and markers were scattered along the sills at their base. A collection of magnets clustered in a small blank corner. A waste basket stood on the floor below them, a single ball of crumpled paper littering the floor beside it

White, misty light shivered over the pictures and notes. A large city map was central on one of the boards. Six red pins were scattered around the part of it that depicted a university area. Flanking the map on either side were photographs of two different young men. Five others were pictured elsewhere on the whiteboards. In some of the photos they were smiling, vibrant, alive.

Somewhere near, a window was opened. The draft that breezed through the squad room danced across the boards, making the pictures and sheets flutter and sway. A soft sound like flags passed through the room.

Miles and miles away, in another city in another state, Penelope Garcia's office stood equally empty. Black screens gaped from the desk and walls. The smell of coffee had found its way into the darkened room, as if to coax someone out who was not there.

At the Crescent Vines Hotel, on the edge of the campus area, Emily Prentiss was sleeping like the dead. She hadn't undressed; her shoes were still on her feet, her cell phone clutched loosely in her hand. In the next room, Derek Morgan had passed out on the bed, where he'd been perusing a large collection of files and reports. His gun was poking into his stomach, but he slept through the discomfort. Across the room, Aaron Hotchner was in front of the television, where the early morning news rolled by without sound. He stared at the screen without seeing it.

Back at the police station, in one of the overnight rooms, Jason Gideon sat on a narrow bed and let his gaze wander over the impressive mess that had somehow managed to personalize the drab, blank room. Books, notepads, files, cardboard boxes, at least a dozen large paper cups. A couple of hideous ties were slung over the back of a chair.

He was thinking about fish guts and archangels. He was thinking about innocence and sin, nightmares and wisdom. The carelessness of age.

"Gideon?"

He didn't look up. With a rustle of unusually rumpled clothes, she stepped inside the room and leaned against the wall. Dark circles under her eyes. Blonde hair lank and greasy, tied back from her face.

"It shouldn't have been a problem," he told her. Looking up at her, he shook his head. "How many times have we taken a case where they look just like you?"

She met his eyes, opened her mouth to speak. Sighed.

"It shouldn't have been a problem," Gideon repeated.

"He went off script," JJ said quietly.

"Yes," Gideon agreed, getting to his feet. "He went off script."

As first light grew ever stronger throughout the police station, he pushed past her and headed for the squad room. Hesitating, JJ followed at a slower pace.

Not bothering to turn on the lights, Gideon placed himself in front of the whiteboards. Hawk eyes traveled from one end; from Joshua Hale, over Silas O'Rourke, Michael Preston, Kyle Horowitz, Adam Morrison, Timothy Berg, to the other. Spencer Reid. His picture was up there, too. A very magnificent seven. They could've been cousins, brothers.

"You went off script," Gideon muttered to the pictures. Beside him, JJ crossed her arms and tried to see what he was seeing. All she saw was Reid's shyly smiling photograph.

Gideon tilted his head to the side. "Why?"

They stood unmoving before the board. Dawn light spreading over the murderous scrapbook. Another draft fluttering through the room. Silence. No answer.

* * *

The other six had all been wonderful in their own ways. Each one was different, each one was its own treasure, and each one was beautiful. But he could not help but feel as if this one was what it had all been leading up to. That this one was what he had been ... practicing for. He had already decided that he would lay low afterwards. He would go somewhere. Disappear. He knew that, after this one, the need would be stilled for some time.

It wasn't just the audacity of it that appealed to him. That was just a bonus. It was the destiny. When the doctor had first appeared, unfolding his lanky frame from a car in front of the police station, he had known. The feeling had been indescribable. Unlike anything. Coursing through him like wildfire, from the tips of his toes and fingers to the deepest recesses of his brain. There he was, perfect in every sense. So beautiful, so frail, so expressive. A perfect piece. His breath had caught in his throat, his knees had turned weak. He came ready wrapped, delivered to his doorstep. The fact that he was there to find the predator made it all seem the more destined to be. As though he had taken the others just so he would come. As though he had called for him.

Initially he had not planned it. Initially it had been nothing but a fantasy. He had not allowed himself to think of it as more than that. It was too extravagant, too dangerous, and completely out of the question. His process could not be adapted to its fantastical proportions. He had even been suspicious, thinking it a trap, a perfect trap to lure him and snare him, and even if it wasn't it was too high a risk to take. Yet he had been unable to let it go. Like a fever it had burned through him, leaving him weak and delirious. So he had done some research. Just to cool off. What he found, rather than stilling his need, had convinced him once and for all.

The boy genius, the fragile prodigy, come from a broken, troubled home. The bumbling oddity, too tender and precious for the enormity of his own mind. Unaware to the point of absurdity of how appealing he was. And, driving the predator to surrender all remnants of doubt, the things that had happened to him before. His history. Already wounded, already made prey by another, already made stronger by survival. Cracked but not yet broken.

Perfect. So painfully perfect. His gift. His reward.

The day before he began his process had been a searing daze of heady anticipation. He had awoken to the sharp realization that he couldn't wait any longer. It wasn't possible. It was time. He'd had to watch some of the new footage just to be able to think straight, and the recordings of the doctor walking down the street, speaking to his colleagues, sitting in his room, was like a montage of exquisite visual torture. The brief footage taken a number of consecutive nights just before the hotel curtains were drawn brought him to climax right there in his desk chair, as he lacked even the presence of mind to put the disc in the DVD player. It was surprising even now how it could give him so much pleasure before the prize was in his possession. The other six had not satisfied him like this. None of them had driven him to this level of…madness.

Once he'd showered and shaved and prepared himself physically, his mind felt clearer. His concentration came to him when summoned. The anticipation, the need, was not so pressing that it was frustrating, not so controlled that he didn't savor it. He was ready.

It took him the better part of the morning to make his arrangements. First the car. Since he'd gotten rid of the van it was new, and so this stage in the preparations was new. He took his time. Then the equipment. The checklist. Sorting the tools he would bring with him into one bag, the ones he would use later into another. Then the basement. Preparing the basement was something he had always taken the greatest care in. He enjoyed it. It was the very last step in his preparation phase, and he did it slowly, meticulously. It still smelled of bleach down there, and he cleaned the walls and floor with ordinary soap, somewhat diluting it. He cleaned the table, polished it, pushed it into its corner where it would wait patiently to be used. He inspected the camera and the speakers, made sure they were still functioning. When he was finished, he stood in the middle of the floor and scanned the room one last time. It was ready.

He didn't allow himself any leisure time for the rest of the day. He walked the dog. Went to work. Kept the mask on. Didn't think of his plan, didn't ponder its risks, didn't worry. Didn't indulge in fantasies of what was soon to come. Kept his mind blank, focused, clear. Time passed at an agonizing pace, but his patience did not slip. Patience would make it all the more sweet. He needed all of it.

That afternoon he was even more cautious than usual when following the doctor. He didn't bring his camera, and he kept his distance. The art of invisibility was one he had mastered long ago, and it served him well now. Apart from the two presumable witnesses whose homes he visited, the doctor only spent an hour outside the police station when accompanying his coworkers to dinner. The predator watched him eat from a nearby booth, fascinated with the slow-paced process, the way he wasn't half as interested in his food as in the thick folder on the table in front of him. The other agents took no notice of him except when he spoke up, contributing to their conversation with a piece of information only he possessed. At one point he launched into a lengthy explanation of something the predator could not hear, and the others watched him with amused exasperation. The unexpected flash of rage caught him off guard. Did they not see how precious he was? How could they not see? Quickly reigning in his temper, he thought of the grim pleasure he would take in their eventual defeat. Their regret.

When they left, he followed. Watched the doctor as he walked. Long hands in his pockets, shoulders low, his long, languid stride carrying him forward with that strange, unselfconscious elegance. Even when he was in a hurry he walked like that. Strangely cat-like, without any trace of the cat's pride.

A dark pit opened up inside him when the doctor was swallowed by the glass doors of the police station. Every time he had to remove himself from the physical presence of his prize he was overcome with the same sense of sadness, but he knew how to overcome it. It would be redeemed.

He went home to a quiet house. The dog greeted him with obedient stillness, didn't protest when he was chained outside as usual. Music helped the predator relax as he settled himself by the computer, the Rolling Stones filling the house with distracting life. He watched the recordings again, and again, looked at the digital photographs, read through the information gathered from his research. The hours passed slowly. He forced himself to keep his control. Didn't lose himself. Not yet.

He slept. Dreamt. Woke from his need, sweat sticking the sheets to his skin. Slept again. The doctor moved through his dreams, just as he would be. In the darkness of the basement, his pale skin glowed white, his dark eyes shone feverishly with fear. Against the rough concrete his flawlessness was all the more prominent. So easily destroyed. Intoxicating power laced the dreams, painfully arousing, drawing him in and out of sleep. In the illogical world of his dreaming mind he had only to reach out and have that soft skin under his hands. The doctor was right there, at his feet, in his arms, and he was just about to take what was his, just about to ravage that thin, frail body, when the alarm clock jerked him into wakefulness. Irrational fury at the interruption made him reach out and slam his fist into the black plastic box before hurling it at the wall.

Almost immediately, he was calm again, staring down at the broken clock with blank detachment. Now he would have to get a new one.

But that was the day when his process began. No slight mishap would affect his mood today. Today those dark dreams would become reality.

* * *

There was no such thing as an odd dumpsite. The place could be completely irrelevant, it could make a disturbing amount of sense, it could provide new information about the UnSub or none at all. It was just a facet of the murder that had led up to its use. In and of itself it couldn't be fully categorized or analyzed. In some rare cases it was all about the dumpsite – it had to make a statement, the statement the murder was committed for. In some cases the dumpsite told them more about the UnSub than the actual evidence did, but overall it was a factor that didn't stand alone. Not like, for example, victimology.

"So you're honestly not bothered at all?" Derek Morgan tore his gaze from the ground and turned to look at Reid. "Not even a little?"

"There's no reason," the young doctor replied distractedly, not looking up from the photographs he was perusing. "There was no reason when we took the case and there's no reason now. The UnSub's need for self-preservation is too strong – he won't take an interest in any of us as individuals, if at all. If he wanted to he would have already."

"But there _is _a possibility that he has contacted us," Morgan reminded him. He crossed the alley to stand next to Reid, looking towards the street as he went. The police ribbon was free of spectators. "We know he might've come forward as a witness."

"Yes, but that has nothing to do with us." Reid looked up at him. "That would be a way for him to keep track of the investigation and possibly, you know, to mislead us."

"It's risky, though, for someone so careful." Morgan paused. "He wouldn't be completely certain that he wasn't the only one to fit the profile."

"Seemingly well-adjusted, single white male between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five, flexible work hours, owns or may have owned a van?" Reid breathed a small laugh and turned back to the crime scene photographs. "I think he'd risk that."

"Yeah," Morgan muttered. "I think he would, too."

"I hate to say it, but we won't close in on him until he snatches another victim." Reid closed the file with a grimace. "We should've been called in as soon as they recognized the MO. Five years ago he vanished, he'll do the same this time."

"Mm-hm. But since he got away back then he's more likely to make mistakes now. When he does, we'll catch him."

Reid nodded absently. He was staring down into the asphalt. "Timothy Berg was virtually tortured to death," he muttered, seemingly half to himself. "Adam Morrison before him bled out, Kyle Horowitz died from blunt force trauma. He kills them because he has to, not because he wants to. " He looked up at Morgan. "The next one will probably be very special."

"It'll be messy," Morgan said.

"It seems that way."

"I don't get it, though. If it doesn't bother you, why did you agree to be moved to the station? It must be hard to get any sleep there."

"I don't sleep much," Reid said. "And it doesn't bother me. That was Gideon's idea, not mine."

"That's what bothers _me_."

"What?" Reid frowned at him, clueless.

"If Gideon's in any way worried, why aren't you?"

"He's not worried. It's a precaution, that's all." Reid was uncomprehending. "It's not like I can't go outside. I'm still working."

"Yeah, he makes sure you're there to question almost every single witness. He's using you to sort the potential suspects from the rest of them."

Reid blinked. "He is?"

"'Course he is, pretty-boy." Morgan smiled. "I thought he told you."

Reid frowned at the graffiti-covered wall of the alley. "I guess I should've realized that."

"He's probably just covering his bases. He's hoping you might distract the UnSub, make him slip up. He also knows it's a long shot."

"The UnSub wouldn't get distracted," Reid agreed. "He's too organized."

"That he is. Look who's here." Morgan turned towards the mouth of the alley, raising a hand to greet the two approaching people who ducked under the tape.

"We're headed back," Prentiss said as she and Hotch halted near the faint bloodstains on the ground. "You need a ride?"

"The detectives already left, so yeah." Morgan eyed Hotch's scowl. "What's up?"

"Some of the local church groups are apparently campaigning for the immediate shut-down of the local gay bars." He looked between Morgan and Reid. "You can probably imagine how helpful that will be."

"But the UnSub won't be frequenting gay bars," Reid said perplexedly. "None of the victims were gay. It's the UnSub's sexuality that determines the victimology, not the victims'."

"The fact that the first victims five years ago were hustlers probably has something to do with it. Anyway, JJ will address it on the press conference tomorrow," Prentiss said wearily. "I would not want to be in her shoes right now."

Reid was stuffing the Tim Berg file into his bag. Apparently there wasn't room for it; he had to take a number of items out and put them aside on a nearby dumpster lid to fit it in. The others watched this fumbling process patiently, supressing smiles. When he was finished he looked up at Prentiss and Hotch, a small frown on his face. "Where's Gideon?"

"He's revising the witness statements. He's hoping to find some anomaly, some detail. I'm not sure exactly what, but…" Hotch trailed off.

"It's probably our best shot right now," Morgan mused. "We were just talking about how he used Reid as a distraction."

"If that had worked you would probably have noticed something when you were questioning the guy," Prentiss said to Reid as they started towards the street. "And you didn't, did you?"

"No. _I_ didn't," Reid answered. "What was I supposed to look for, anyway? It's not like he would've asked me out on a date."

Prentiss allowed herself a snort of laughter at the unexpected joke. "No, but he might've been acting strangely. Absent or unfocused. He might've looked at you too often or avoided looking at you altogether. He might've directed his attention at you instead of Gideon or acted as if you weren't there."

"But most people act a little strangely when they're being questioned, even witnesses. I don't think it would've been easy spotting the UnSub that way."

"Of course not, but it might provide us with a direction. A line of inquiry. Anything."

"Well, if Gideon didn't notice anything…"

"You're right. It's unlikely." She heaved a sigh. "Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could just get DNA from every single white male ever interviewed on this case?"

The others laughed tiredly. They had arrived at the car; Reid took a moment to look around, seeming a little skittish. Morgan noticed, his mouth tilting into an amused grin.

"I thought you said you weren't worried?"

"I'm not." He pulled the car door open. "But now you've messed with my head."

"Oh, have I? I'm sorry," Morgan chuckled.

In the car, everyone except Reid was swiftly engaged in conversations on their respective cell phones. Hotch was being accosted by Quantico while Prentiss spoke to the local police and Morgan checked something with Garcia, but Reid was too distracted to register what was going on, his attention on the contents of his bag. He was sure he'd put his wallet in the inside pocket, but it seemed to have disappeared. Digging through the files, notepads, countless pencils and miscellaneous debris, he could not locate it.

"Wait, guys," he said, extracting his hands from the depths of the bag. "I think I forgot my wallet at the site."

"Jesus, Reid," Prentiss commented, covering the phone's mouthpiece. Without a word, Hotch glanced at Reid in the rearview mirror and turned the car around.

"Sorry," Reid mumbled, biting his lip.

"Where's your head, kid?" Morgan said.

"I'm not sure," came the quiet answer.

They pulled up outside the alleyway, and Reid darted out of the car before any of the others could follow. "There he goes," Morgan sighed. "Shouldn't one of us go with him?"

But the other two were both still on the phone, and Hotch was simultaneously steering the car back around. Morgan didn't press the matter, knowing it was unnecessary. Knowing the profile as well as the investigation so far dictated that there was no reason for increased vigilance, knowing that it was just an alley, that he and the other two were just a short sprint away. But in the back of his mind something persisted, repeating to him the supposedly irrelevant fact that Reid was now staying in a secure room at the police station, snugly locked up at night like a princess in a tower. He knew how to interpret his own gut feelings. They'd been a constant companion for too many years.

"I'm gonna go with him," he announced, exiting the car before it even pulled to a stop. He crossed the street at a jog, pushing past a man walking a dog as he went, and came around to the mouth of the alley to find that it was empty.

His heart skipped a beat, but he kept calm. "Reid?" Striding swiftly into the alley, ducking under the police tape, crossing the patch of asphalt where Tim Berg had been found less than a week earlier. Trying to hold at bay the unbidden memory of that naked, broken body as he made his way to the dumpster where Reid had been unloading his luggage to make space for the dead boy's file. "Reid!"

"Found it," a voice said somewhere close; Morgan's hand flitted automatically to his gun.

"Reid, you airhead," he breathed as the doctor stood up behind the dumpster. "I almost shot you."

"It must've slid off," Reid explained, holding up the offending item. "Sorry if I scared you."

"At least you didn't get yourself kidnapped."

Reid laughed uneasily. "Again."

They went back to the car. In a nearby doorway to an apartment building, the man with the dog watched them go. The Labrador at his feet sat quietly, obediently. The predator reached down to pat its black, glossy brow, his eyes on the departing vehicle. A shadow of a smile hovered around his lips.

Night came too slowly. He was left alone with his thoughts, thoughts that drove him to such frenzied frustration that he was compelled to retreat to the basement. Closing the heavy door behind him, he descended into pitch darkness, cool, black silence closing around him like a thicket of night. It helped. His thoughts stilled, left him in something resembling peace. Blind as a bat, he traced the grainy concrete walls with his fingers, leading himself slowly around the square room and its sparse furnishings. He found a strange comfort in experiencing the place as they had experienced it. As the doctor would experience it. Under his fingertips he felt the smooth surface of the table, the soft leather of the straps fitted to its sides, he felt the cold porcelain of the sink and the toilet bowl. Putting his hand into the blackness, he felt the cold, bleach-scented air. Emptiness caressing his skin. He could hear his own slow breathing, his regular heartbeat. Without meaning to, he began imagining this place as the doctor would soon come to know it. Began seeing himself as the doctor would see him. It was confusing. Not altogether unpleasant, but strange.

At least an hour passed in the dark. He began feeling pleasantly relaxed. Content. This was just what he needed. Why he did was a mystery he did not care to explore. None of the others had driven him down here before he had fetched them.

He emerged into the darkened house clear-headed and refreshed. A feeling of destiny had settled upon him, and he relished it, answered to it as he finally commenced the process. It called to him with a steady persistence, telling him with sharp clarity that he was ready. It was stronger than ever, so strong he felt something akin to fear, something sharp and unfamiliar. He was about to embark on something very important. Afterwards there was no telling who he would have turned into. Crucial times lay before him. It was tantamount, as if written in stone, that he do this right. This one was special. This one was his destiny.

The doctor's face, every detail of it, his sharp jaw line, full lips and deep, jewel-bright brown eyes, hovered in his mind like a vision as he quietly left the house and stepped out into the warm evening. Soon it would be his. Soon all of him would be his.

He knew now that he loved him.

* * *

Over the past week, the furious activity which had held the police station in a state of near uproar had simmered down considerably. It was still there, but now it seethed like something that had been left on a stove too long. The pace had slowed; the energy had seeped out like air from a balloon. Elvis had left the building.

It was like clockwork. Investigations like this took time, and much of that time was spent in what could seem like inertia. The press usually had a way of making it look like nothing at all was happening, but this was not the case. Follow-ups were rigorously done and done again, facts were checked and rechecked, witnesses were re-interviewed, new angles were cautiously explored. The results tended to be slim, but these activities were nonetheless important.

No one needed to say it, it didn't need announcing, it was well understood – what they did need was another victim. They had reached a point where they were hoping for one. It was surreal, at the very least, to hope for the discovery of another dead boy, but there it was. The team of behavioral analysts who had come to town when Timothy Berg's brutalized body turned up were used to this part of the process. They didn't like it, but they were used to it.

At night, the slow activity of the day was virtually non-existent. There was one detective on duty, who spent very little of his shift inside the station house, and a couple of officers were manning the tip lines, but other than that Reid was very much alone. Gideon was the only other BAU member who hadn't yet returned to the hotel, but he had barricaded himself in the squad room with the entire case stacked around him in cardboard boxes. He was still pursuing the direction that the UnSub was to be found somewhere among the witnesses, and when Reid finally gave up his attempts at sleep and headed for the squad room himself he was met by a staggering mess.

"Good God, did you set off a bomb in here?" he said, crisscrossing the grid of tables and chairs to get to the other side. Gideon glanced up at him distractedly, intent on his work. The table he was seated at virtually groaned under its weight of files and books. Reid picked up one of the latter, recognizing it as a fairly obscure piece of literature on sexual sadism. "This is new," he observed. "You think the UnSub might be transsexual?"

"Not at all," Gideon answered without looking up. "I just needed the list of source material in the back."

"Oh." Reid put the book down. "I was just getting coffee, do you want any?"

"Please."

Gideon didn't watch him leave. He would take the main corridor to the little lunchroom by the elevators, passing no less than two coffee machines on the way, and he'd take the time to make a pot of poison that would keep him awake for another couple of hours; hours spent trying to locate whatever research out there he had not yet come across. Not because he was taking the case personally. Not because he identified with the victims. He was simply doing his job. When the job was done, he would pass out on the plane just like the rest of the team.

Once alone, Gideon quickly lost himself in dark musings. All sense of time fled. He soon began muttering quietly to himself, voicing thoughts as they tumbled into place.

"You return them," he whispered. "You clean them. But you don't cover them. You don't dress them. You simply give them back. No ceremonies, no rituals. Just a delivery. You know they won't reveal anything useful about you or where you've kept them. That's why you clean them in the first place; to wash away any trace evidence. The only thing you let them tell us is what you did to them. Are you taunting us?" He paused, squinting down at the mess of papers and files on the table. "Or are you just showing us how confident you are? The extent of your meticulousness is something you take pride in. Do you need us to see it, too? Is that why you return them? You certainly don't want forgiveness. All you care about is the fulfillment of your fantasies. You need to take what's yours. You need to be in control."

He pulled a notepad towards him and started scribbling seemingly random words. "Control," he muttered. "Control is everything. You need to plan it down to the smallest detail. The whole process needs to be mapped out carefully before you start. There's nothing sloppy about it, nothing's left to chance. You enjoy the planning and the preparations almost as much as you enjoy the boys. You pace yourself, you take your time. You're in control of your own need as well as your victims. You take pleasure in your own restraint as well as their pain. Control." He printed the word in clean, large letters on the lined paper. "Control. Control is everything."

In the sudden silence as his stream of thought trailed off, Gideon felt himself frowning. A moment later he lifted his gaze from the notepad, suddenly becoming aware of something. It was picking at his attention like the insistent buzzing of a mosquito, fleeting and faint but definitely there. Like he had forgotten something he was supposed to remember. He straightened on the chair and stared into space, trying to pin down the feeling.

Another second or two later his gaze focused on the ticking clock on the wall above the door right across from him. Night was displayed there in two angled arms.

"What…?" he heard himself whisper. His chest tightening unpleasantly; a sensation like tumbled ice cubes trickling down his back; a numbness of the arms and legs. Breath dying in his throat, the machinery of sharpened thought grinding to an abrupt halt.

A moment lasting no longer than a heartbeat passed, suspended and lengthened in the vacuum of sudden flaring panic. "It doesn't take twenty minutes to get coffee," Gideon said to the empty room; another heartbeat later the spell broke and he was on his feet. Seven long strides took him out into the darkened, empty corridor. Irrational backwaters of his mind conjured Reid there, ambling down the linoleum floors with coffee steams trailing behind him, unscathed. Gideon passed this wishful thought and broke into a half-jog.

There was no time to reason with his instincts. He would have, gladly, but in spite of a dogged assumption that he had overworked himself into paranoia he knew – he knew – that something was very wrong. It was one of those pieces of near-preternatural knowledge he'd never had to explain to those who trusted him. One of those certainties that had ushered him again and again into the presence of the creatures he hunted. He just knew.

Light spilled from the lunchroom doorway. It formed a dull white mist on the floor of the darkened corridor. Heart lodged firmly in his throat, Gideon crossed it and halted in its center. Bathing in the same glaring light, the lunchroom looked somehow obscene. Exposed and naked. Like a spattering of unsavory fluids, broken glass glittered on the floor, spread out around the black plastic handle of a coffee pot. Its rightful place, the coffee maker, stood abandoned on the counter. An open kitchen cabinet gaped above it.

Gideon looked at the mess for no longer than a second. As he retrieved his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans he was already spinning on the spot, determining the route the UnSub had taken. To his right were the elevators, two of them, and to his left the corridor that led back the way he'd come. The latter was a dead end as far as Gideon knew.

He dialed a number and put the phone to his ear as he crossed to the elevators. A tired voice answered on the second ring. "Hotchner."

"It's Gideon."

Brief, ominous silence. Then, "What's wrong?"

Gideon looked between the two elevators. Neither of them was presently moving. Softly, he spoke into the phone. "I think Reid's gone."


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

…_most appropriately described as a sociopath. The level of his compulsion indicates an undifferentiated antisocial disorder, probably stemming from a damaged sense of self-worth brought on by childhood abuse and other external factors. Strictly speaking this is not a psychopath…_

…_one of the most inexact profiles we've ever had to release. It barely scratches the surface of our UnSub's behavioral pattern. Unfortunately it's killers like these we've had trouble apprehending in the past. The contradictions, most notably between the different phases of the MO, make it extremely difficult to pin down…_

…_control at all times. It is everything to him, and if we can find a way to take it away from him we've got him. Unfortunately this can't be done until…_

"…_want you to stay here for now. It's just a precaution, I'm not worried."_

"_Then why…"_

"_Like I said, it just seems like the prudent thing to do. Once again, I'm not worried."_

Reid was waking up. Thoughts were flickering into life, consciousness reclaiming its familiar shape. Without yet actually being aware of his body, he could still feel that there was something sticky and artificial about the thick, heavy darkness that slowly retracted its claws from his mind. Drugged. He knew the feeling intimately, had induced it voluntarily too many times not to be closely acquainted with it. But this was not voluntary. Was it? He never took this much, he never passed out…

…_may very well be openly gay, but there's an equal chance that his cover is that of a completely average heterosexual, white male. If he's open about his sexuality he wouldn't be so in a way you would notice; there would be nothing flamboyant or stereotypical about his demeanor…_

"…_need for self-preservation is too strong – he won't take an interest in any of us as individuals, if at all..."_

"_Where's your head, kid?"_

Breath was rushing in and out of his lungs. It streamed in through open lips, touched the desert dry inside of his mouth and trickled down his throat. It was coming slow and shallow, and he could taste some aroma on it, some cold tang that, moments later, he could also smell as it entered his nostrils. Bleach. Bleach with a flimsy overlay of soap and…and a dankness, a stale quality that was vaguely reminiscent of dried mud. Like the cavernous, subterranean archives underneath the FBI Academy where they stored all the flotsam and jetsam that had not yet been digitalized…

…_would have a secure space of some kind where he can be completely alone with his victims and have no fear of being interrupted. It could be a basement, which means he might very well be committing the murders in his own home, or it could be a safe house of some kind, most likely somewhere isolated outside the city…_

"_Once again, I'm not worried."_

Sensation was returning to his body. Like a low hum, it stirred and fluttered and spread through him, his extremities soon itching and searing with life. Breathing steadily in and out, thoughts nowhere near attempting to grasp what was happening or where he was, he confirmed distantly that everything was where it should be, that nothing was missing. There was a faint, dull ache taking shape somewhere between his temples and his eyes, but other than that all he could feel was a heaviness of the limbs that made the option of trying to move seem deeply unattractive. It didn't strike him as very odd that he seemed to be lying on what felt like a concrete floor. Vague, half-formed notions and ideas skittered in and out of his thoughts, slipping away as soon as he reached for them as if to spare his still impaired mind from trying to comprehend them. By now, he had identified the chemical fogs tangled doggedly around his every synapse as something quite removed from the embracing laudanum mists of acid-spiked dilaudid; no, this was something vaguely similar but far less insidious, something of a considerably simpler design meant for a considerably simpler purpose. He knew it, he was sure he did, but the knowledge was one of those elusive things that kept shooting out of his reach…

_They're burning fish hearts and livers. It keeps away the devil. _

The last time he' woken up from the unmistakable stupor of unconsciousness, his head had been pounding like someone took a bat to it. Tobias had knocked him out, had been somewhat less sophisticated than this would suggest…but who else? He must still be there, in the shed, with the stench of Tobias' protection stinging his nostrils…

_They believe you can see inside men's minds._

It's not true…I study human behavior…

Realization struck, abruptly setting his heart aflutter in his chest, and fear came seconds later, flaring up inside him like a lit match thrown into a pool of gasoline.

Not fish hearts and livers. Anesthetic. It was an anesthetic.

Vaulting over him with dizzying speed, he remembered; the break room, the empty coffee pot in his hand, the sound of glass breaking when he drops it. A second in which he has barely enough time to register that someone is grabbing him from behind, someone much stronger than him, someone who was not there a moment ago, who came out of nowhere. Then the pain, sharp and small and centered just below his jaw, signaling the blackness that instantly envelopes him…

Naked fear tingled on his skin, raising the little hairs under his clothes and at the back of his neck. On some level, he was still in that shed, brought back to the place where last he'd felt like this, where last he'd been in a similar situation. At first, it made everything much, much worse, the panic thickening and expanding into an incapacitating weight that held him down, choked him. His breathing was much too fast, the sudden excess of oxygen making his head spin. Then his mind, his mind that would often function without his help or permission, kicked its rambling machinery into life, instantly taking the edge off his fear with a generous dose of cool, detached logic. For one bizarre moment, he was outside his body, outside his skin, looking down at a vast, mental pattern of diagrams and equations that made no sense whatsoever, because he had no idea what was happening. It was all variables. What did he know? He was lying on his back on a concrete floor, he'd been heavily dosed with some kind of anesthetic –

…_puncture marks on their necks, which shows a practiced routine, one we know he perfected somewhere between the third and fourth victims five years ago…_

…_the chloroform he used on his first victims left an unattractive rash around the lips, something he would've wanted to avoid …_

…_traces of an animal tranquilizer commonly used on elephants…_

– and his hands were tied. His hands were tied. How had he not felt this before? Panic fought to take control of his thoughts, flared and thrashed wildly in time with his racing heartbeats. Yet still he reasoned, still he analyzed and processed, still his mind worked as if of its own accord.

The shackles were duct tape, simple but effective, and it felt like the stuff had been wound tight around his ankles, as well, the hems of his pants separating it from the skin. His eyes were open, something he hadn't been aware of before due to the complete pitch darkness outside his lids. Judging by the acoustics of his rapid breathing, the room he was in was sparsely furnished. The walls were probably concrete, too. It was completely quiet. Not a sound. The air was cool, even a little chilly, and then there was the smell. The bleach. It was this, this very small thing that would mean very little in a normal situation, that allowed the notion he was extremely reluctant to acknowledge pierce his fear. All too swiftly, he had pieced together the information he'd gathered, but it was the bleach that convinced him.

No. No. Just – no. It wasn't, it couldn't be. No.

While his mind had been working furiously, his body was becoming increasingly lighter, freed breath by breath from its sedation. There was still a grogginess lacing everything, a laziness that would have been pleasant if he hadn't been so terrified, but there was a possibility to move, now, so move he did. Shifting on the floor as much and as quickly as he could, which was to say very little and very slowly, he bent his knees, pushed them upwards. Felt the soles of his shoes coming to rest against the floor, the scraping noise that rang out confirming that he was indeed lying on concrete. Breathing heavily, he adjusted his hands behind his back, tightened them to test their strength. They wouldn't make fists, but it would have to do. Summoning every ounce of energy he could spare, he pushed against the floor, heard himself utter a weak sound of effort as he tipped himself sideways.

Once on his side, he had to stop, dragging greedy lungfuls of stale air. Sitting up would have to wait. The bleach was sharp in his nose, stronger now that he was half facing the floor. The small effort of turning onto his side had exhausted him as effectively as a marathon, and it was all he could do not to simply sink into the seductive call of the drugs, the soft blackness that was so much more alluring than this dark, dank place that he would not, could not reasonably be in…

_The UnSub's need for self-preservation is too strong – he won't take an interest in any of us as individuals, if at all. If he wanted to he would have already._

No. Panic flared again, clamping icy claws around his heart. No, no, no…

It was a joke of some kind, wasn't it? Something Morgan had cooked up, something that was meant to be funny…

Even if Morgan would've had a sick sense of humor, which he didn't, he would never have found this funny. The people Reid went to high school with might have, but no one he knew today would ever conceive of anything even remotely resembling this scenario.

But it had to be. It couldn't be anything else. It had to be a joke or a bad trip…

He never took anything when he was on a job. Never. And it wasn't dilaudid deadening his limbs, it wasn't dilaudid lacing his thoughts. He wanted to reach up and touch his throat, feel for a puncture wound, but there was no wriggling out of his duct tape restraints. No point even trying.

A whimper escaped him, thin and hoarse amidst his ragged breaths. A scream clawed its way up his throat, but he was too exhausted to let it out. Frightened tears burned in the corners of his eyes.

_Timothy Berg was virtually tortured to death._

He could name any number of times when he'd regretted having an eidetic memory. It would distract him, draw his focus from where it was needed, as his colleagues could happily testify. It didn't encompass everything, as a rule only things he'd seen, and one would think it would be hampered rather than heightened in a situation like this. He closed his eyes on the darkness, tried to concentrate on calming his breathing, but it was no good.

_Adam Morrison before him bled out, Kyle Horowitz died from blunt force trauma._

No. No, no, no, no…stop. Stop

_He kills them because he has to, not because he wants to. _

Reid badly wanted to scream, now. His reason was slipping, cool logic giving way to ferocious, rampant panic. Seemed fitting. Were there any cameras here? Any screens via which he could communicate with Gideon, Hotch and the others while they searched, yet again, for the weakest member of the team? Did they know yet that he was no longer at the station house?

The concrete was cool and rough against his forehead. Breathing in the smell of bleach, a smell that covered a multitude of sins, he felt a sob ascending in his chest. It burst from his lips, reverberated eerily around the room.

_The next one will probably be very special._

* * *

It was almost embarrassing how perfectly it had been executed. Every single tiny facet of his plan had locked in place just as it was meant to, as if on cue, as if the forces of fate had reached down to direct the pawns of their play in a delicate dance. Pondering the level of his success filled him with a strange, wild sense of importance. The ease with which he had fulfilled every part of his plan left him unsure whether to laugh madly or to cry like a little girl. It was perfect. So painfully perfect.

It had surprised him how cool and calm he'd been from the very off. Between setting out for the police station, getting in position to wait for his window of opportunity and finally snapping eyes on the doctor as he made his way down the corridor, he had believed with uncharacteristic self-doubt that he would lose his focus, become too impatient. But his concentration had not slipped even once. It was as if some purer, heightened part of his brain had taken over, outmaneuvering all disruptive thought. There had not been a single moment of hesitation, no undue nervousness, nothing. His mind had been a smooth, streamlined machine of ice-cold, crystalline focus, his body coiled and wound like it was made of a single muscle. Ready, prepared, determined.

When it was time to strike, he'd been so utterly present inside himself that it had only seemed natural that he became hard before even laying hands on the doctor. Slithering soundlessly up behind him where he stood with the coffee pot in his hand, he had seen everything as if in highest possible definition, the spectra of color, light and shadow dancing across his vision in kaleidoscopic clarity. The doctor had never looked more beautiful. Half turned away from the doorway, his head lowered, neck gracefully curved. Hair curling softly over its tender whiteness, small ears like absurdly perfect seashells in the golden brown locks. Eyelashes lowered over pale cheeks, lips slightly parted.

The predator had imagined he could read every tumble of thought behind the absent-minded stillness of his face. He was thinking of the case, thinking ceaselessly of the next thing he could do to edge closer to the predator. The irony was maddening. The predator had smiled behind his mask as he ghosted up to within an inch of the doctor, raised both arms and locked him in a tight grip in one fluid movement. Less than a second had passed before the syringe had sunk into the ropy sinew in his neck, and the predator had put one hand over his mouth before he could utter even a gasp. He had barely registered the sound of breaking glass as the coffee pot fell to the floor, but knew that no one was near to hear it. The doctor's body had been a warm, wiry mass of muscle against him as he began to struggle. The predator has savored it, had savored every writhing movement so deeply that he teetered briefly on the edge of climax right then and there. As the fight went slowly out of his prey, seeping from his limbs with his consciousness, he had closed his eyes and pushed his face into that soft mop of hair, greedily inhaling the smell of cheap shampoo and the more indefinable, elusive scent that was the doctor's own. His need burned and seared, straining painfully against the fabric of his trousers, but he ignored it with terrifying ease and set about the next stage of his plan.

Even in unconsciousness, the doctor had been lighter than he'd thought. Gathering him gently into his arms like a bride, he started out of the building on swift, soundless feet. The usual, vaguely hysterical urge to hurry had not settled over him; he'd been calm; had been a ghost all the way to the car, leaving no trace behind him except the absence of what he'd taken. It was with fleeting regret that he tumbled the doctor into the back of the car; he would have liked to keep him close even during the drive to the house. Without tarrying, he secured the tarp over the prone form of his prey to make sure he wasn't visible from the outside, then got behind the wheel. Drove off slowly, carefully as if he had nothing to hide or hurry home to. When he was outside the immediate vicinity of the station house he removed his mask, looked at his watch. Less than ten minutes had passed. He was right on schedule. If he was lucky, no one would notice that the doctor was missing in at least another ten.

A sense of peace had settled over him by the time he steered into the garage and turned the engine off. Silence. His own breathing was steady and deep, his heart pounding loudly but levelly in his chest. The feeling of clarity remained. He could feel the rush of blood in the network of veins throughout his body, could feel his thoughts like spoken words in his head. The air he dragged into his lungs, smelling of new car and paint and dust. Excitement finally caught up with him, popping and simmering like the first tentative bubbles in a pot of boiling water. He thought of what he had hidden in the back of the car. Thought of the joys he would derive from it. His arousal, still not faltering, called insistently for his attention but he kept ignoring it. One more stage left to his plan, before his process was finally in motion.

He got out of the car. First he took his bag into the house, then returned to the garage to collect his prey. Scooping him once more into his arms, he carried him inside. The basement door stood open, and he descended the steep stairs slowly. He had already lit the lamps and strode into the middle of the bright space, crouched on the floor and gently laid the doctor down. The roll of duct tape was in his pocket; he took it out and wound several layers of it around the doctor's wrists and ankles. Once finished, he arranged him on his back and took a moment to brush his hair carefully from his face.

This was all the touching he would permit himself for now; he put his hands behind his back and allowed himself another moment of just looking. A beatific smile stole onto his lips. The doctor looked so peaceful, his breaths coming slow and shallow, his face serene. In the glaring electric light streaming from above, he was even paler than usual, the ever-present dark circles under his eyes making him look almost sickly.

After a minute or so, he got to his feet and left the basement, climbed the stairs two at a time. He closed the heavy door and locked it. The light switch was located right next to it, and he flicked it with the same blissful little smile still lingering around his lips.

It had begun.

* * *

After it was established that an abduction had taken place, all available units were called to the scene. Phone calls were made to the nearest FBI field office, to Quantico, to the district attorney. Within minutes, the previously quiet police station was swarming with frenzied activity. Roads were closed, helicopters made to stand ready, channels of communication secured against press and other intrusions. Everything was ruthlessly effective, and there was a general feeling that, inevitably, something had to be found. Some piece of evidence, some trace, something. A foot print, a rope dangling from the roof to the ground, a broken window, a dead or wounded security guard. There was a general feeling that, finally, the Riverside Stalker had slipped up. What other reason would there be for such a hazardous act? An FBI agent, of all things. The most low-risk victim anyone could ever have imagined. He'd lost it, he'd snapped, he'd finally given them the means of stopping him.

While squadrons of uniforms and officials swarmed to and fro in the corridor outside the taped-off lunchroom where Dr. Reid had presumably been taken, two people were frozen to the spot by the yellow police ribbon. Agents Hotchner and Gideon stood with their arms uselessly at their sides, both of them staring from under dark frowns at the scene that was currently being meticulously processed by two CSUs in white overalls. They had no words to say to each other, because no words would be adequate. Unlike the rest of their team, who had only been able to find any semblance of sanity in leaping directly to some form of action, they had done what they had to do and then done no more. Their particular skills would be of little use to the processes that had to be set in motion after something like this. Blame, guilt and shame that held neither rhyme nor reason hung like a thick, glutinous veil in the air between them, and addressing it was currently out of the question. So they were silent. Still and silent, each of them left to their own darkness.

Unbeknownst to the numbers of police officers, detectives and other relevant personnel teeming throughout the building and its immediate surroundings, they both knew that nothing would be found. No foot print or dangling rope, no broken window. They had a profile, and the profile rarely lied. No, this UnSub, whom they would never call by the name given to him by the media, had left nothing behind for them to find. He had not slipped up. He had not lost it. He had planned this meticulously and executed it without a hitch. He had entered the building, taken what he wanted and left just as quickly. Had left nothing behind.

The night deepened. Darkness was slung thick and unyielding throughout the city. The Riverside Stalker had snatched his latest victim, and if he stuck to the schedule he established all those years ago with the murders that gave him his name, this one would be found in a rough week. Hotch and Gideon could not keep from wondering how they would be able to do what they always did and incorporate this forthcoming murder into their profile. How they would kneel at the crime scene and scrutinize every nook and cranny of it, how they would analyze the manner in which the body had been left. How they would listen to the coroner's report.

But despair would get them nowhere fast. Staring down at the scattering of glass on the lunchroom floor, they both silently repeated this to themselves. There was still time. It had only just begun, after all. There was still time.

* * *

**Evidence log**

**Item #42 – Digital video recording recovered from domicile of M. Jones**

**Following is a transcript - - **

**Scene is rectangular room, windowless, painted white. SSA Reid on his back on table centrally placed. Appears strapped down by hands and feet. Undressed apart from underwear, numerous visible signs injury on his person.**

**UnSub [voice, not seen] - - You know why I chose you.**

**SSA Reid - - I don't, I really don't. You're smart. This isn't smart.**

**UnSub - - True. Very true. But you know I had no choice.**

**SSA Reid - - Of course you had a choice. You always have a choice.**

**UnSub - - Not me. I never had a choice. Especially not with you.**

**SSA Reid [agitated] - - Bullshit. You know they all say that. You're kidding yourself.**

**UnSub moves into view. Black, indeterminable clothing, black mask, facing away from camera. Small blade in right hand. UnSub approaches SSA Reid, blocks SSA Reid from view. **

**SSA Reid [voice] - - No. Please. Please. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Please.**

**SSA Reid heard screaming.**

* * *

This was nothing like Georgia. That had been a stupid, pointless mistake, a snap decision made due to a shortage of time and patience. It had been Reid's fault. JJ could just as well have ended up in that shed. It would still haunt him, thinking of that alternate scenario. That would have been infinitely worse. He'd wanted to tell her on several occasions that he was glad it had been him, but had a feeling there would never be a good time to have that conversation. It was a shame, really; he'd only just begun to put that nightmare behind him.

One would think he'd be reminding himself, now, of the outcome that ordeal had had. He'd survived. He'd come away from it in one piece, with no visible scars. Some emotional issues, certainly, and a slight substance abuse problem, but nothing that had broken him completely. He ought to be focusing on these facts, now. He ought to be stepping off there, applying them to his current situation. If he'd been able to do so, he might've found his way back to the familiar realm of cool, intellectual reasoning. He might've opened himself up to the many ways in which his situation, unpleasant though it was, differed from the situations of Joshua Hale, Timothy Berg and the four other boys this UnSub had murdered over the course of the past few months.

Ironically, it was the whole Tobias Henkel business that had hampered his ability for cool, intellectual reasoning in the first place. His life before that hadn't exactly been a breeze, but after it was over the control that his intellect had previously held over his emotions was damaged, off kilter. Always having feared the more shadowy corners of his mind, the corners his mother was permanently confined to, he had kept to the strictly decipherable, the logical, the concrete. Ceaselessly hoarding every scrap of knowledge he came across, he had believed it would give him the power to remain in control even if those shadows were to eventually wrap their arms around him like they had his mother. After Georgia, after coming face to face with that part of himself, he'd had to reassess this idea if not abandon it altogether. Reset, reboot, start over.

What would it have taken to put him in control of his emotions now? If Georgia had never happened, would he have been able to think, would he have been able to muster up anything resembling focus? What would Morgan, Hotch or Prentiss have been doing right now in this situation? What would have been going through their minds?

He wouldn't have been able to give himself an answer even if he'd wanted to. All that preoccupied Reid's vast intellect at this time was the undeniable knowledge that nothing Tobias Henkel had done to him would ever compare to what was in store for him here.

* * *

Artist, musicians, authors; they would talk of being "in the zone". As if it was exclusive to those of a creative profession. As if making something with your hands, with your mind that others might appreciate on a sensual or spiritual or intellectual level gave you that precious ticket to the higher planes of existence.

He was well aware that what he did could never be appreciated by others the way, say, the Mona Lisa was appreciated. The only outsiders out there who might derive some form of pleasure from his work were irrelevant, meaningless creatures. He didn't do this for them. The worship he knew could be practiced by various scumsuckers too weak to seek their own salvation was immaterial. Many relished it, many thought of themselves as belonging to a culture, a breed. Not the predator. He never even fleetingly entertained the notion that he was doing this for anyone other than himself. But nor could he deny that the plane of existence he was currently occupying could only be described as the zone.

He left the basement for the remainder of the night. Partly because he needed to sleep, but also because there was an instinctive feeling that there had never been a better time for delayed gratification. It had been this way with the others, too; it wasn't an established routine that he would stick to as a rule, but it had worked for him the majority of the time. After first fetching them he would leave them down there with the lights off for at least a couple of hours, as it would usually tilt their fear towards the irrational and childlike even before he'd shown himself. There was no telling how each individual would react, but most often the results would be more than satisfying – especially since he'd abandoned the habit of taking prostitutes. That had been the early days, days he could remember with both embarrassment and a certain fondness. He'd always been planning to move on to better things, better boys; the whores had been essential in perfecting his skills, and they'd all been lovely, if lacking the softness, grace and intelligence he sought.

Apart from the strictly physical qualities of his preferred prey, it was this, the inner workings, that drew his eye. As had it been with the doctor. His prize. The six before him had been chosen for their gentleness, their ignorance of their own beauty, their shy, contradictory nature. Something elusive, something damaged turning them inwards on themselves. Many around them had been just as easy on the eyes, and often more so, but their beauty had been something they carried with pride and ease. Uninteresting, even boring in their confidence. No, the predator needed frailty, guilelessness, complexity. The doctor possessed everything he looked for in his prey, most of it heightened and more defined than in any of the others. He knew, now, that there had never been any possibility of forgoing him. The moment he'd first laid eyes on him, he'd been undone. He never stood a chance.

Every part of him, every fiber of him, was filled with a concentrated bliss bordering on euphoria when he awoke the next morning. Leaping out of bed with a knot of anticipation warming the pit of his stomach, he went about his usual routine with studious care, putting all his focus into showering and brushing his teeth and having breakfast as if it was any other day. He read the paper, only skimming the compulsory daily update on the so-called Stalker to confirm that the press was yet to get wind of the night's events. He walked the dog, did some grocery shopping, had a brief chat with one of his neighbors, all the while savoring the bittersweet distance between himself and the basement.

By the time he settled down by the computer, he had managed to dawdle several hours. He was light-headed with longing, dizzy with thoughts of awaiting pleasures. But there were still paces to take before he could begin to fully sate his need; teasers, so to speak, that would make his eventual descent to the basement all the more fulfilling. He always viewed the first recordings, for example; always made sure to see every single moment of his prey's initial time in the basement. Closing the blinds and switching off the lights with a certain reverent care, he let the computer screen take up his vision completely, the green hues of the night-vision recording immersing him in an eerie glow as he leaned back in the desk chair.

The recording began moments after he'd deposited his prize below, and he fast-forwarded the first hours until he could see the initial stirrings of returning consciousness. He became instantly excited, but kept his hands on the desk as he watched the doctor's wide eyes glowing white on the screen, staring blindly into pitch darkness. The sounds streaming directly into his ears from the headphones were like music; rapid, thin breathing, the fabric of the doctor's clothes brushing against the concrete. His arousal grew insistent as he watched panic alight on his prey's face. He had not expected him to go through the same motions of hysteria the others had, and he'd been right; a small smile stole onto his lips as the doctor, refraining from even trying to tear free of his restraints, tipped himself onto his side with a grunt of effort. He then laid still, dragging panicked breaths into his lungs, as despair briefly twisted his features and a first sound escaped him: a dry sob. The predator made fists on the desk to keep himself in place, regulated his own quickened breathing.

He would not be able to wait much longer. He would not take care of his arousal here, by his desk in order to prolong things further – he should have, it would have been perfectly prudent, but knew he wouldn't. Not with what was hidden below so clearly depicted in eerie greens on the screen before him. He sucked in his breath, held it, and forced himself to keep watching.

His prize remained still. The predator unknotted one of his hands, took hold of the mouse and fast-forwarded, confirming that the doctor had barely moved save for small, panicked twitches and jerks for almost nine minutes upon regaining consciousness. Grimaces of emotion would flicker across his face, until finally he rolled onto his back again – the predator resumed normal playback swiftly. His prey was breathing steadily but much too loudly, chest rising and falling visibly as he stared blindly into the ceiling. His face was now quite still.

Another minute later, he took a great tremulous breath and began shifting himself into sitting position. Arching his long, narrow back, he grunted with effort and slowly, after two failed attempts, managed to sit up. The predator felt absurdly proud, watching him claim lungful after lungful of air as he slumped over his knees, folding in on himself in an upright version of the fetal position. The predator was amazed. It was remarkable, how his first minutes down here had been spent. Others had stridden to action like this, had resolved to practical measures as if in response to some deeply rooted instinct, but not so soon. Not so readily. This was not instinct, urging the doctor to shift and move his hands behind his back, checking if he would be able to ease them down to the duct tape at his ankles – something the predator had made sure only a very flexible person could accomplish. The doctor was not particularly flexible; in fact he was rather out of shape. He quickly established that there was little use in trying to snake his way out of his restraints, like the predator had known he would. This was not instinct; this was training. This was experience.

Instead he allowed himself a moment to simply breathe, head lowered so that, frustratingly, the predator could not see his face. Then he straightened. Began, very carefully, to shift blindly across the concrete floor, unknowingly heading towards the left wall. The predator sighed. It would take him minutes to get there, and all he would find was the alcove that held the facilities. The sink and the toilet and the shower head that was fastened to the wall above them would no doubt tell him a great deal about his so-called UnSub, and he would assimilate it all into the profile he and his team had already put together.

The predator, impatience crawling into his fingers, fast-forwarded again. The doctor made it to the wall, falling over twice on the way there, and with his back to it he pushed himself to his feet. Wobbled a little before settling against it. He then began to explore the room with his bound hands. It was an awkward business, and the predator had to slow the playback once or twice to look at his face as he found the facilities. The image was too blurry to read the finest of emotions, but it was clear the discovery confused him, unsettled him. He continued into the corner, edged along the far wall. Halfway to the next corner and the right wall, which held the table, he suddenly lowered his head and halted, knees buckling. The predator released a sigh of disappointment. The drugs. Of course. In his excitement he'd forgotten. They always needed several hours to recover completely.

The doctor slid along the wall and sat down, tipped his head back against the concrete. His eyelids drooped, and it was rather abruptly that he appeared to pass out again. Once he was still, his breath slowing to a steady shallow pace, the predator relaxed and sank back in his chair. Grabbed the mouse and jumped ahead again, all the way to the end. The doctor slept throughout. With his breath once more suspended in his chest, the predator then opened up the live feed to see his prey as he was now, at this very moment – a notion that sent a spasm of heady anticipation through him before the screen had even flickered into life.

Still, his prize was motionless, either sleeping soundly or something akin to it. The predator had seen it before. Not quite fainting, they simply left wakefulness, fled. Perhaps still conscious, but nonetheless removed from the world. He didn't know whether or not he preferred it to the occasional tantrums some of them had thrown; there was definitely something deeply satisfying in seeing them struggle against him before they had even laid eyes on him. But he'd known already that his prize wouldn't engage in irrational bouts of fury. The clever ones never did. They bargained, they reasoned, they begged, and only when all methods of intelligence were exhausted would they resort to denial and rage. He had high hopes for this prize; the careful exploration of the basement was enough to convince him of their legitimacy. He was expecting this prize to use his words, his knowledge, his genius. Something original and unpredictably intricate. Something of his very own invention. He was a professional. How many dangerous situations had he not talked his way out of? How could he not expect to do the same now? It would make the process so much sweeter, the eventual realization that he was beyond help so much more effective. The predator felt that absurd sense of pride yet again at this, as if he should take credit for this himself. In a way, perhaps, he should.

He secured and turned off the computer, rose slowly from his chair. Caught in a familiar mix of sharp focus and flaring, heated excitement, he felt certain that his descent to the basement was due. This was the purpose of it all. This was the reward for his patience, his perseverance, his meticulous preparations. This was why it was all so truly and deeply worth it.

He retreated to the closet next to the basement door. Breathlessly, he donned the clothes; dark and without a trace of labels, they wouldn't provide even the doctor with a single piece of useful information. The sound of his heart, loud and relentless in his chest, seemed to fill the tiny room, shake the walls. Every little spark to his senses was like a razor's edge. The fabric of the clothes against his skin was like sandpaper and silk all at once. It was agony, yet he slowed his hands, hardened his resolve. Patience.

The mask was pulled over his head and secured neatly in place. His eyes and mouth were all that showed, with a small hole for his nostrils. The mask, too, was untraceable, as were the materials he'd used to make it. This level of caution was not strictly necessary, but a valid part of his process. He knew the power it brought, this facelessness. He knew how it would help him maintain the upper hand, especially with the doctor.

There would be no need to bring his equipment. Not yet. Later, when his prize was ready, he would begin that particular stage of the process. For now he could carry what tools he needed in the pockets of his pants. Scissors, pen knife. Extra duct tape. The first descent was always a delicate business. It was crucial to get it right, to give it the time and dedication it deserved. Now more than ever it was fundamentally important to move with the utmost care and patience. He had been very good so far, it was almost as if the gravity of the situation, the essential and tantamount value of his prize, had enabled him to go through the motions even more meticulously than usual. It all fit, like a perfect jigsaw puzzle, coming together beautifully.

His breath was purposefully slow and steady, yet it felt curiously suspended in his throat as he exited the closet and moved over to the basement door. He slipped the key from where it lay on the shelf on his right and turned it in the lock. There was a metallic, grinding click, and he replaced the key before grasping the knob and pushing the door open. It swung on oiled hinges with a tinny whisper like the pendulum of a clock, into pitch darkness. The sparingly lit house filtered a mist of light down the steps and into the room below. He could not see his prize from where he stood at the top. He reached for the light switch and flicked it, blinked as the harsh electric light flooded up the stairs. Then he listened. It did not take long before he heard it; the sudden scramble of shoes against rough cement, the scraping of a back edging up a wall. The doctor had pulled himself upright. Briefly, the predator imagined him down there, standing weakly against the wall, doe eyes wide and fearful. He imagined there would be panic in their umber depths, more than a trace of it, half-hidden beneath razor sharp vigilance and superficial calm. As he listened, the starkly lit cellar grew utterly quiet. His prey was still. Waiting for him to show himself. It sent the smallest of shivers through him, the thought of the doctor's anticipation like a twisted reflection of his own.

Allowing himself a deep, silent breath, he took the first step. Closed the door behind him with another dusty hiss. Slowly, not bothering to dampen the sound of his feet on the concrete, he made the descent. One hand was allowed to trail idly along the wall, and with each step he took he was filled with a familiar and profound confidence. A feeling of finally landing inside his true self. This was who he was. This was the purpose of him. The prize waiting below was his and his alone, and the certainty of it, the truth of it, stilled every remaining tremble of his nerves, slowed his heart to a level, strong beat. The world was at his feet.

At last, he descended. His boots connected with the basement floor, and he was there. He could see his prize, pressed up against the wall as he had predicted. He looked back unwaveringly, avidly, and the predator saw it happen; in an instant, he had begun to analyze what he was seeing. Clothes, mask, an unexplained absence of weapons. Height, approximate weight, skin color.

The predator basked in the attention, basked in the knowledge that he could read the doctor just as he was trying to read him.

He stood still, arms at his sides, aware that an unthreatening pose would unsettle the doctor far more than instant aggression. Observing his prize with that same wild clarity that had held him in its grip since he'd first retrieved him, he wondered if the doctor would speak first or wait for him to break the silence, to greet him or present his motives. He would do no such thing. This process was thoroughly tried and tested, and while some things could be changed or left out altogether, others were too important. Waiting for his prey to speak first was one of those things. Usually it didn't take more than a few seconds.

This time, he concluded with some satisfaction, would clearly be different. The doctor simply watched him, his chest rising and falling rapidly with each shallow breath, occasionally punctured by a sudden swallow, a nervous wetting of the lips; the sight of the pink tongue darting out sent fire into the predator's loins.

He raked his eyes down the graceful line of his neck, over the hollow where his collarbones met, into the shadowy space between his patterned shirt and the pale skin of his upper chest. He had taken off his tie at some point, and the predator could recall that he had also worn a sweater vest during the day. Readying himself for sleep, he had shed his gun and his belt, and consequently his cords hung lower than they were supposed to on his narrow hips. A secret smile tugged at the corners of predator's mouth as his gaze traveled over the differently colored socks. One was purple, the other brown.

Careful not to use any sudden movements, he put his hands into his pockets. Took another sidling step into the room. He kept at an angle to the doctor, avoiding anything that would resemble a direct approach. As he stalked slowly around the periphery, he kept his eyes on his prey, who in turn stared back with a kind of wild fascination. Burning gaze like searchlights on the predator. His hair was unkempt, blades of burnished brown lying tumbled across his cheekbones. A faint smell of cold sweat drifted across from where he stood against the wall. The predator could see that he was purposefully trying not to cower, standing as straight and tall as he could manage, chin up and jaws set so tight his temples had turned white. There was a hint of a tremor in his knees.

The predator halted. He was by the wall, almost exactly opposite his prey, and he leant his shoulder here, hands still in his pockets. The doctor swallowed again, and again, his Adam's apple bobbing along the length of his throat. At long last, after a record two minutes and twenty-six seconds, he spoke.

"Why are you doing this?"

The phrasing was familiar, but that was all. It wasn't a rhetorical question, wasn't the helpless, pointless query that the others had made as a means of expressing their own confusion. There was nothing resembling a plea in his words, nothing of the desperate reach for the vaguest possibility of mercy. It was just a question. A genuinely curious and bemused question, telling of his profound puzzlement at this unforeseen turn of events. The predator could almost see it, written on his every trembling breath, across every whirling emotion that flickered through the dark pools of his eyes. _The profile doesn't incorporate this. The profile doesn't lie. Why is he doing this?_

"Because I want to."

It was as honest an answer as he could think to give. The doctor was not reassured. Beautifully, like a rapidly spreading dawn, his fear took on a new acuteness. Draining more color from his cheeks, glazing his eyes with feverish, raw despair. It was allowed a brief moment's play across his features, and the predator could see, if only for the fraction of a second, the chaos and disintegration that lurked on the other side. But the mask of control was in place as quickly as it had slipped, and when the doctor asked his next question it was in a surprisingly steady voice.

"But you must know how risky this is."

The predator already knew he wouldn't answer him this time. Once was more than enough. He was pleased with himself so far, pleased with the way he'd been able to foresee much of his prize's reactions. Pleased with the doctor's self-control – and more than pleased with his own, something he now realized he had feared for. Perhaps he still should; keeping his eyes on his prey's face and not let them drink in the whole of him was an effort of concentrated willpower. Just the way his hair brushed against his cheeks, casting shadows over the hollows of his eyes, made his breath shift out of his lungs just a little quicker.

Boldly, the doctor kept talking. "You must be aware – this isn't safe. You're too careful for this, too organized, I –"

He cut himself off, tightening his lips over his teeth. The predator was distantly amused; perhaps he had come close to uttering something that could be perceived as an insult. Had they read that kind of rage into what he'd done to the other boys? Had they seen him as that full of wrath and hatred? If so, it was no wonder they hadn't caught him yet. He wasn't sure whether to be flattered or frustrated.

That soaring, all-encompassing feeling of destiny had settled over him again; he was abruptly aware of it – compelling him to move before he could give it a second thought, to act without premeditation. Some form of instinctual impulse made itself known, weaving its way around his every synapse and telling him, clear as day, that obeying was the right thing to do. He was surprised. Usually he would not descend into that deeper place until much later. The second or third day it would envelope him, lead him into the abyss where nothing existed except him and his prize, eventually taking him higher than any drug ever could and guiding him into that frenzied last climax. Considering how much this one differed from the others, he didn't see a reason to give his surprise more than a fleeting thought.

Pushing himself away from the wall, he took a slow stride towards the doctor. There it was again, that keen blade of panic flitting across his features. Sharpening his beauty, heightening the flawlessness of its delicate dimensions. It had always fascinated him, how those he chose tended to unwittingly wear their fear like a sheer layer of finest silk, putting that thin, mercurial wildness into their eyes. Like a graceful doe, untamed and inscrutable. That tangible intelligence, shrewdly and incessantly seeking a way out that isn't there. He would never tire of seeing it. The doctor's fear was subtler than the others', less consuming, less debilitating. Paradoxically, he recognized it from the prostitutes; those who had already known fear in its many forms.

Still at a safe distance, the predator halted. Heard himself speak.

"What did he do to you?"

A frown, confusion flaring up before it was pushed beneath the mask. "I'm sorry?"

"Tobias Henkel. That was his name, wasn't it? The man who took you before."

Silence, stretching long. Clearly he hadn't expected anything remotely resembling this question. "Yes. Yes, that was his name."

"What did he do to you?" the predator repeated patiently.

"He abducted me. He had a dissociative identity disorder, split personality – in – in his delusion he was the archangel Raphael and he was supposed to, ah…punish sinners." This was stammered out in a rush, without a breath.

"He thought you were a sinner," the predator said softly, pacing two steps closer. The doctor, freezing at the approach, would not or could not answer. His face was still, deathly still, too still – had he been any of the others, this was the moment he would've broken. Would've fallen to his knees, begging for release, or lunged forward in a thoughtless attempt at escape. He did neither.

The predator felt the air thicken in his chest, felt the heat of his need intensifying. Growing, filling him to the brim. Anticipation tingled like Indian burns all over him. His vision narrowed, tunneling towards the doctor's face, his pallid, beautiful face. As their eyes locked once more, it was as if they both knew what was coming.

The last piece of the puzzle chivvied into place.

Two long strides took him across the floor. The doctor recoiled against the wall, caught in a paroxysm of reflexes that was nothing more than instinctive retreat. One of the predator's hands came up to rest, palm down, on the wall next to his head, while the other hung free, out of its pocket but still posing no threat. Their faces were three inches apart, but the predator was yet to actually touch him.

"You didn't answer my question."

The doctor wet his lips again, unconsciously tantalizing.

"Wh – what?"

"What did he do to you? The archangel."

"I – I don't know what you –"

"How did he punish you?"

Ebony eyes stared into his through the mask's holes. Whites showing around the dark irises. Broken breaths tearing out of a parched, constricted throat. It was a thin, strained voice that answered him, a voice laced with half-restrained despair.

"He made me dig my own grave."

"Did he now?" The predator allowed himself a quiet chuckle. "That's…imaginative."

He could see it happen; that last distant, irrational hope that he was here for altogether different reasons than the six boys before him, that last flimsy gossamer-fine straw, fluttering away. What remained was difficult to name. The predator couldn't reach it, couldn't see the scope of it. Just the crazy shadows that those dark eyes held.

Searing, delirious excitement suspended his breath as he raised his free hand to touch a white, smooth cheekbone. It was hot under his fingers, burning with the blood of a racing heart. Still holding his breath, he rubbed his thumb across the shallow depression above an angled jaw and down to coral pink lips. His prey was silent, hadn't moved or winced at all, but now his paralyzed stillness was marred by a slight shiver, a convulsion that sent his lids fluttering shut and twisted his mouth ever so slightly. The predator relished this display, traced his thumb over a stiff bottom lip, momentarily exposing a row of slick, even teeth. He shifted his hand, and in the same moment as the doctor attempted to turn his head away from the touch he grasped him by the jaw, holding him still. Gasping down a sharp breath, he opened his eyes and slanted a wide, terrified look at his captor.

"Please," he whispered, and still it was more reasoning than it was pleading. "You don't want to do this. You know it's too hazardous."

Another chuckle was allowed to escape the predator. How predictable – he could only assume that, as he assimilated more information about his predicament, the certified genius would think of something more sophisticated to say.

Beating furiously like bird's wings under his fingers, the doctor's jugular vein witnessed of gathering panic. Now his fear was sharp and uncloaked on his face, his breathing shallow and much too fast. It was a beautiful sight. Heart-stopping. The predator's arousal responded to it with increasing insistence.

The doctor's shoes scraped against the floor as he took a firmer hold. Put his other hand against the wall to steady them both. He released his breath in a long sigh, simultaneously leaning forward and drawing a small grunt of protest from his prize before roughly covering his mouth with his own. His lips were warm and soft and squeezed tightly shut, as unwilling as he'd expected them to be. As the doctor exhaled through his nose in an irregular staccato of whimpers, he deepened the would-be kiss, placing his other hand on his prey's face and inching closer until he stood pressed against the other man's slighter frame. He was stiff as a board, not even squirming, and so thin he seemed to melt into the forced embrace. Keeping his own open, the predator could see that his prey's eyes were closed as firmly as his mouth. As though that thin membrane of skin could shield him from what was to happen.

When the predator pulled back, he seemed to instantly calm himself, bringing his composure at least halfway back to where it had been. He opened his eyes, locked gazes again with the predator. Visibly trying to regain control of his panicked breathing, he swallowed once, twice.

"This isn't a good idea," he murmured. "It's too messy."

The predator couldn't help but smile. His insides were ablaze, his palms were cradling the face of his prize. He let one hand stray into the tumbledown locks of his hair, the silken feel of it trickling a shiver like rivulets of liquid fire down the predator's spine.

Messy, indeed. Could it be that he already knew how right he was?


	3. Chapter 3

**3**

The chain of events was a little sketchy, but by the time the information that had been trickling into the local newsrooms all morning had been adequately substantiated, it appeared that the Riverside Stalker had already been spending several hours with his latest victim. It was around noon that the press release reached its intended recipients, confirming nothing but another press conference with FBI Communications Liaison Agent Jennifer Jareau an hour from now, but giving more than enough legitimacy to the numerous tips that had been hauling people out of their beds and into work since shortly after midnight. As usual, there had been a lot of nonsense bundled in with the presumable facts, and it was only in the immediate vicinity of the editors in chief that certain people had been in feverish discussion for some time over that nonsense, nonsense that had been coming in from too many credible sources to be dismissed out of hand. It was outrageous and much too disturbing, too much like fiction to be anything else – but there was no denying its significance. Two newspapers published it, and when the press conference opened ten minutes past one it was a pale and tense Agent Jareau that stepped up to the microphones.

She was interrupted by twelve people before uttering so much as a greeting. Was it true? Had someone who worked on the investigation been abducted by the killer? Was it someone at the core of the proceedings or someone at the fringes? Someone important? How could this have happened? Were they not equipped to prevent it? Shouldn't FBI profilers have been able to establish whether something like this was on the killer's agenda?

JJ could barely hear them. It was like going through a tunnel, a painful vacuum clogging her ears. Except she could see no end to this tunnel. She had to find her professionalism somewhere deep, deep down, and still she couldn't seem to remember how to most effectively shut the horde of reporters up long enough to get her statement out. A statement she wasn't sure she'd manage to give without stammering or forgetting herself or stopping mid-sentence to let out the frantic wail that had been lurking in her chest since last night. She didn't want to be here, talking to these strangers. She didn't want to take that step back she always took and keep a clear and focused handle on the media-related issues of the case. She didn't want to think about the public's reactions or the impacts of sloppy journalism or how to stay in favor with the local authorities after what could only be perceived as a royal FBI fuck-up.

She wanted to be out there, anywhere out there, and scour every inch of this godforsaken city for the friend and colleague she'd already gotten kidnapped once before.

If only it had been her in that shed.

While she delivered the news and was met by shocked silence and another onslaught of shouted questions, Jason Gideon was holed up in Reid's messy overnight room inside the station house with Derek Morgan and every single witness statement from this case and the case five years ago, when the UnSub had killed his first known victims. There were no common denominators in the two groups of files, and so analyzing it all was a process so lengthy and psychologically woolly that it bordered on the impossible. They were both taking notes, jotting down anything of interest, as they sorted the files into different stacks categorized in a complex system only they could understand.

Agents Hotchner and Prentiss were in the field along with a large number of detectives and uniformed officers, moving in a circuitous pattern based on the geographical profile Reid himself had drawn up, which in turn had since been updated to, ironically, incorporate his own abduction. Both agents were brooding and irritable, radiating a kind of cold, controlled fury, and the uniforms that accompanied them kept at a wary distance.

At Quantico, Penelope Garcia was talking to her computer screen, shifting between a tone of pleading desperation and one of very verbal anger. Her mascara was smudged, and she had not reapplied her cherry-red lipstick in hours. Her desk was littered with coffee mugs and balls of tissue, and anyone who dared stick their head into the room received a bloodcurdling string of insults for their trouble.

In a quiet street not far from the Crescent Vines Hotel, David Malcolm was watching the live broadcast of the FBI press conference. He was having his lunch in front of the television while simultaneously reading the sports section, and it was with half an ear that he listened to the strained female voice that informed of the Riverside Stalker's latest endeavor.

"…_confirmed late last night that one of our agents was missing. As of yet we have no definite evidence that an abduction has taken place, but certain signs have led us to believe that this is the case. The fact that no other missing persons have been reported is also a strong indicator that the person responsible is the same man who as been abducting and killing young men around the college campus area. The agent in question is with the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit and is part of the field team that has been aiding the police in putting together a profile of the assailant."_

Realizing that he'd been reading the same football scores half a dozen times, David looked up at the TV screen. Had he heard that right? An FBI agent?

"_We have no information at this point as to the purpose of the abduction, since the killer hasn't been in any direct contact with us or the police before this. There's a possibility he's angered by the involvement of the FBI, or that he's been close to becoming a suspect and felt the need to make a statement to let us know he won't be caught. This kind of extreme display of confidence would indicate some sort of breakdown, and there's a good chance he will expose himself in the very near future as a result of it."_

David squinted at the screen. There was something in the woman's voice that rang false. Her eyes flickered sideways, too.

"_I am not at liberty to tell you that," _she said in response to a question concerning the kidnapped agent's identity. A reporter who had clearly done their homework shouted, _"One of your profilers has been abducted by a suspect before, correct?"_

"_Who was that?" _someone else yelled. _"It wasn't the same one?"_

Her expression oddly fixed, the woman who, according to the ribbon of text below her chest, was Special Agent Jennifer Jareau once again replied, _"I'm not at liberty to say. Our agents' identities are protected in cases like this."_

Waiting out the stream of loud journalistic enquiries, she then proceeded to give a repetition of the profile that had apparently been released the previous week. David, who had not followed the case, listened for no other reason than that it was morbidly fascinating. And an FBI agent – it was just outrageous. He'd never heard of anything like it. Clearly, it had happened before, which only made it all the more interesting.

"_The person we're looking for is a white man between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five. He is by all appearances a well-adjusted citizen, doesn't attract any undue attention and has more than adequate social skills. He's the kind of man most people would be very surprised to hear had done something like this. Well-liked and respected both in his private life and in his professional life. He has a well-paying job with flexible work-hours, allowing him to take the time he needs when he needs it to carry out his crimes. It's possible he's open about his sexuality, that he has come out as gay to everyone who knows him, but if so he doesn't consider himself as part of the gay community, preferring to maintain a lifestyle that shows no visible signs of his sexuality. There is also a chance he lives as a profoundly average, heterosexual male, possibly even dating women. He drives or has at some point driven a dark blue van. _

"_He has a secure space, either inside his house in the form of a basement or a specially equipped room, or in a separate location, which could be anything from a bomb shelter to a remote cabin. He's neat but not obsessively so, and his person and place of residence are kept clean and orderly. He doesn't drink or do drugs because he feels it brings a lack of control, and he uses an excuse for this – he might say he's a recovering alcoholic or that a parent drinks, something that would avert further questioning. He's likeable and intelligent with a good sense of humor, he shows up to events he's invited to but doesn't make any invitations himself. He doesn't argue with neighbors or co-workers, and he doesn't play music loudly or park his car in the wrong place."_

She spoke for another couple of minutes, and David noticed that she would often give two opposing scenarios in the killer's behavior. As if it was far from certain.

He returned to his paper, spending a stray thought wondering in the most distant way whether he knew someone like that. His friend Paul was gay, but he was a hairdresser. Several of his neighbors had freakishly clean cars, but this was a nice neighborhood. Someone in his street _did_ drive a dark van, but he couldn't be sure it was blue. He tried to remember whose it was.

Number twenty-four, wasn't it? The guy with the black dog. Gorgeous dog, David's girlfriend had attested. He'd had a chat with him just yesterday, recalled that he'd seemed to be in a good mood. What was his name? Something like Smith, Johnson, something nondescript. Jones, maybe.

David allowed himself a snort of laughter. If that man was a serial killer, anyone could be a serial killer. The guy was a total sweetheart.

* * *

It wasn't the rape itself that was worst. It was knowing it would happen. Knowing every detail of the act, of what had been done to the others. The bodies had held inconclusive trace evidence, DNA that was too contaminated to do anything but get them a possible suspect out of a mitochondrial match. It would never hold up in court, but it could provide them with a direction. The amount of tearing and bruising had witnessed of repeated assault, escalating in brutality each time; objects had, as far as the ME could tell, not been involved. There had been teeth marks on the shoulders and necks, purposefully damaged by what looked like cigarette burns and thus excluding the possibility of dental identification. Kyle Horowitz had teeth marks on both ears as well, while Adam Morrison had them on his genitals. Like the crimes in general, there was no fixed modus operandi – an overall symmetry, but, with the exception of ligature marks around one ankle, as if from a manacle, no identical injuries to the bodies. Small variations existed on all of them. Silas O'Rourke, the second victim, had been missing a large chunk of his hair. Joshua Hale had had the word 'mine' carved into his lower back, while a cluster of shallow x's were scattered almost idly along the insides of Timothy Berg's thighs.

In some darkly rational backyard of his mind, there was a half-acknowledged hope that it would just be over and done with. That the UnSub would get to it quickly, that he wouldn't have to suffer through any foreplay. But it was greatly overshadowed by a desperate, irrational conviction that it wouldn't happen. It couldn't. It was just…no. No.

Even after that first strange kiss, it still remained, removing him from the inevitable realization. Like the terrible knowledge that a loved one could die suddenly and violently or become mortally ill. It wasn't allowed to inhabit any nook or cranny of his thoughts. It just couldn't be.

The UnSub had his hands on Reid's face. One was in his hair, and Reid felt a spasm of panic as he leaned in again, this time, apparently, to smell him. A sharp inhalation close to his ear, in his hair, the fabric of the mask brushing against his cheek.

Dark, dense fear reared up, too compact to suppress, and he jerked away. He knew that it would do him more harm than good, but for some reason still kept trying; as the UnSub dropped one of his hands to Reid's elbow to hold him still, he continued to struggle, strained his head as far away from the man as he could, twisted pathetically in his grasp like a fish on a hook. Dimly, he heard another throaty chuckle, and soon he was being handled with far more determination than before, with the hand in his hair coming down to wrap around his throat. To his horror, the other strayed from his elbow to his crotch, took a hold that froze his struggles and forced a thin whimper from his lips.

"I thought you were a genius," whispered the UnSub, breath on the side of Reid's averted face. Pressing his cheek into the wall, Reid felt for a fleeting moment as if he wasn't there, as if he'd vanished into thin air and left an empty husk behind. The feeling was so familiar it sent a shock through him. Raphael's pitiless voice winged its way through his thoughts, like a far-off fall of rain. He closed his eyes, wrested it down, tried to reclaim what remained of his self-control.

Once he was still, the hands loosened but didn't let go. The UnSub leaned close again, brushed his nose and mouth over Reid's jaw, the curve of his neck. Reid tried to breathe, determined to maintain at least a rudimentary hold on his panic. In through his nose, then out. Breathe.

His skin felt thin. Eggshell-thin and just as brittle; the very surface tension of him stretched to breaking point, his clothes little more than cobwebs. The world had never been so insurmountably real – the pitted roughness of the concrete, the thin layer of inescapable duct tape around his wrists and ankles. The compact body crushing him against the wall. Slow, feathery nuzzling in the hollow of his neck, like a spider he couldn't swat creeping towards his lifeblood with bared pincers. The touch could have been tender. Could have been loving.

When the UnSub finally withdrew the hand from between his legs, Reid became aware of an unmistakable stiffness against his left pelvic bone. Instant denial, lasting about a beat of his racing heart, before the urge to vomit clawed its way abruptly up his throat. He gulped it down, dragged stale air into his lungs to keep from gagging. Heard himself whimper again, a pitiful, childish sound.

The UnSub blew a soft shush into his ear. Fingers caressingly on his throat, a thumb over his chin and across his bottom lip again, firmer this time, more invasive. Considering prying it open. As soon the touch was gone, words came bubbling up before Reid could think to stop them, high-pitched breaths of imploration.

"They'll find you, you know they will. Please. You must know…please. I'm a federal agent. They'll crucify you."

It was as if he hadn't spoken.

Something cold and wet touched his neck just below his ear; it took him a second to accept that it could only be the UnSub's tongue. Resisting the urge to engage in more fruitless struggling, he held his breath and endured the tasting, prodding kiss. It moved to his ear; teeth closed on the lobe in a sudden bite. Reid bit back a yelp, tried vainly to get his head further away, to melt into the wall. The abrasive concrete stung on his cheek.

In that absurd place, that darkly rational place, his thoughts were still tick-tick-ticking along. Half-smothered in snarls of panic and denial, he was only distantly aware of them. But his mind, this obscure and mysterious construction, was as usual carrying out its own objectives. Even if the topmost levels of his consciousness wouldn't go there, wouldn't acknowledge it, the cogs and wheels and ones and zeros below had begun devising a strategy.

He took a breath. Unclenched his jaw to speak.

"I'm not going to fight you."

It came out a trembling murmur. The UnSub ceased his exploration of Reid's ear and pulled back an inch or two. Went completely still. Reid watched him out of the corner of his eye, too scared to turn his head to face him. "I won't struggle," he said, somewhat steadier. The fact that he'd managed to coax a reaction from the UnSub with just one sentence gave him if only just a hint of hope. "I won't resist. I…"

The words knotted in his throat, but he forced them out. "I'll cooperate. I won't fight you." He had to close his eyes briefly, had to choke down another wave of nausea. Fragments of coroner's reports, recalled in sharpest detail, flashed through his head. High-definition images of what had been done to the six boys. Still he thought of them as boys rather than men, something he would've taken offence at himself. The youngest had been twenty-one years old.

Still the UnSub wouldn't move. Reid could hear his steady breaths, could feel the warmth of them on his cheek. Every inch of him was screaming for escape, but that same backyard of his brain knew he had to stay perfectly still.

"I swear. I won't fight. I swear. Just…do whatever…" His voice broke. "Whatever you want. I won't struggle."

"Look at me."

Reid blinked. That voice. It occurred to him, that if by some miracle he were to ever get out of this basement alive, he would always remember that voice. Smooth and level, it had the kind of neutral non-accent people learned from vocal coaches. It would remain with him, that voice, until his big old brain succumbed to madness or age. He would hear it in conversations in the street, in coffee shops, on the radio. In his sleep he would hear it. It would be in there with Raphael, with Charles Henkel. With the whispering corn.

It was some hidden recess of strength that allowed him to obey the command. He turned his head, one inch at a time, and faced the black mask. Two eyes of nondescript blue met his. Cold and otherwise empty like an overcast sky, the raw lust that burned in their depths seemed not quite human. Primitive.

"Say that again."

Reid's heart was like a marching band in his head. It trembled through him with each beat, down to the soles of his feet and into the floor. He opened his mouth, realized it was dry as dust. Swallowed one, two times. Wet his lips. The urge to retch was there again, at the back of his throat.

"I won't struggle," he breathed, releasing the words in a rush of air. "Just – just do whatever you want with me."

He couldn't be sure his muddled mind wasn't deceiving him, but he imagined a smile lit up the UnSub's cold eyes.

"Interesting," he said pensively. "You're the first to try that so soon."

Reid clutched at his thoughts, willed them to align in a way he could make sense of. "Try wh…what?

A hand in his hair again, fingers combing through the tousles.

"But I suppose the agenda must be different for you. The others just wanted me to stop hurting them. I haven't hurt you yet."

Breathe. Just breathe.

The UnSub tutted softly, mildly disapproving. "You're not like the others. You're special. I assumed you were aware of that."

"You're right," Reid stammered. "I am special – I'm with the FBI. It's quite a – a statement you're making."

Without warning, the hand in his hair flitted down and grabbed his chin. Reid bit back a grunt of pain.

"Is that how you see me?" muttered the UnSub, his mildly puzzled tone a stark contradiction to his viselike grip. "That disappoints me. I think you know…"

A content exhalation of air, not quite a sigh. "I think _you _know it's not the case. You…" He moved his other hand, ran it up the length of his arm. "You're special."

Reid had time to press his lips shut before the second kiss. This one was painful, almost violent. Like it was meant to bruise. He had to keep reminding himself to breathe, had to push down more pangs of nausea. It lasted only seconds, but it was more than enough to set his mind spinning, effectively pitching any other ideas he might've had into obscurity.

The hold on his chin fell, and he hacked out more words because it was all he could think to do. They came out flat, dogged, pointless. "I will not – fight – you. I will not."

Cold eyes met his, alight with warped fascination. One hand trailed to his hip, began to tug at his shirt. Eased it out the waistband of his pants. Blackness, thick and looming, bloomed momentarily around the edges of his vision.

"Yes, you will."

It never occurred to him to go back on his word. Never occurred to him to scream, to thrash and twist and struggle. Beneath the panic, beneath the density of fear and dread and childish denial, his mind was still working. Relentlessly, mercilessly working.

So he gritted his teeth against the torrent of animal sounds that slithered up his throat. Allowed himself only the grunts and huffs of sudden physical movement as the UnSub grabbed him by the front of his shirt and jerked him away from the wall. Hauled across the room in a deranged travesty of a dance, he distantly registered the man's sheer strength. How he handled his captive like a ragdoll, deliberately careless. A child with a toy.

He was aware of the floor disappearing from under his feet before he was slammed down onto a hard surface, the impact knocking the wind from his lungs. It took him a second to grasp the fact that it must be the table, the one in the corner he had seen earlier. The table with the straps. His legs hung off the edge, bound feet feebly skimming the floor, and the UnSub was right there. Leaning over him, hands still clutching at the front of his shirt to keep him down. Feral eyes locked on his face. Reid scrambled to regain his footing while simultaneously trying to summon the ability to breathe, and the ink-black rims of nothingness threatened to drown his vision once again. A confused moment in which he thought he would pass out, not entirely certain he wouldn't prefer to; gasping down precious air, relaxing his arms as best he could against the table; feeling his resolve slipping, feeling the urge to lash out in any way he could spanning the length of his every muscle.

More to harden his nerve than anything else, he hissed between labored breaths, "I won't fight you. Do you understand me? I won't."

The UnSub angled himself over Reid, put his face close. A notion that had come to him once before, when the man had first descended the stairs, resurfaced doggedly. Again he dismissed it. Even if he could somehow manage to get enough momentum to headbutt his captor with the kind of force that would knock him out cold, there was still a flight of stairs to climb, not to mention a locked door at the top. So he lay still. Didn't fight. Wouldn't fight. Tiny ember of hope still smoldering somewhere in the wild and wiry darkness.

"I assume you haven't had any experiences with men," the UnSub murmured, scentless breath on Reid's face. Reid clutched at his thoughts, ordered his larynx to function.

"Why – why do you assume that?"

"You were very young when you went to college," the UnSub replied, dryly, and the fact that he was making a joke spiked Reid's fear with a new kind of desperation. He couldn't think of anything to say in response – for a split second, he couldn't think of his own name.

The UnSub straightened. Reid's hold on his fear was already dangerously close to slipping, and when his captor's left hand settled firmly around his shoulder, allowing the right access to the buttons of his shirt, he was sure he would snap. That the near-autonomous intelligence guiding him through this would dissolve into inactive gray matter, be swallowed whole by his fear. Turn him finally and irrevocably into what he simply couldn't, wouldn't be.

Victim number seven.

One button, two buttons. Three. Fingertips brushing against his skin.

There was still a profiler there, skulking stubbornly in shadowy cerebral backwoods. Still scheming, strategizing, maneuvering through the wilderness. There were statistics there, figures and diagrams and algorithms hiding in the brambles.

_The non-consensual element is crucial to this UnSub. It's the complete dominance he has over his victims that gives him the release he craves. _

Four buttons. Deliberately slow, the UnSub worked them one by one. Stale basement air climbed down his chest.

He kept still. Took air into his lungs, released it. Compelled his eyes to remain on the masked face above as the fifth and sixth buttons went. The UnSub regarded him with that same inscrutable fascination, observing him, scanning his face for the smallest shift in expression. Bizarrely, Reid was reminded of lecturing; having somebody's undivided attention whether you liked it or not. He had never been fond of it. Had always been more of a student than a teacher.

_Outside this part of his life, his sexuality can be described as virtually nonexistent. Any partners he might have between his crimes are part of his other identity, the well-adjusted citizen. They would be a front, a convenient cover. _

The UnSub let his hand hover over the last button, inches from Reid's groin. His stillness and stone-cold calm, while a disturbing contrast to the erection Reid could still feel against his hip, enabled him to get some kind of perspective on his own self-control. There was no point in trying to affect indifference, no point in trying to breathe normally or to ask his heart to pound any less frenetically against his ribs. No point. But he set his teeth, arranged his face as best he could. Remained unresisting in the UnSub's hands.

_If he doesn't perceive himself as in unchallenged possession of that complete control, in unchallenged possession of his victim, he won't be able to achieve this release._

Tugging the last button loose, the UnSub folded Reid's shirt aside. Cold, cold air, twitching a succession of spasms through his insides. Almost instantly, his nipples began to sting and itch, and he had to suck a slow breath through his teeth to keep from whimpering when the UnSub placed a hand on his collarbone. Slowly, lingeringly, it moved down his chest, across his ribs. Rubbed a thumb over his left nipple, then his right. As abruptly as he'd bitten his ear, the UnSub then pinched the raw knob of flesh between thumb and forefinger, twisted it as though to pull it free from the skin. A strangled yelp tore out of Reid's throat before he could stop it.

_The non-consensual element is crucial. If he doesn't perceive himself as in unchallenged possession of his victim…_

The hand was moving again, as were the UnSub's eyes; raking down the length of Reid's body in pace with his searching fingers. Reid could hear his breaths quickening into irregularity when they reached his abdomen. Circled his navel, slid across the skin just above the waistband of his cords. Fingertips eased underneath it, ran the length of it to his hip. Reid had to close his eyes, had to bite down hard on the inside of his cheek. The clear sign of panic drew an excited inhalation from the UnSub; he leaned over again, resting the bulk of his weight on Reid, and in the same movement let his hand slip inside.

Reid gasped down his breath and held it, snapped his eyes open. The UnSub's face was a foot above him, ice blue gaze like moons in an unfamiliar sky.

"I presume you know how treacherous a man's body can be," he muttered, eerily business-like. "How it has its own rules. Indifferent of what _you _might want."

He grasped Reid with cold fingers. "It reacts to certain stimuli, starts certain physiological responses that have nothing to do with whatever emotional processes might be taking place."

Reid would have answered him, would have let him know that there was nothing he could tell him that he didn't already know. That he possessed every piece of knowledge there was to possess on the various kinds of sexual cruelty people could inflict upon one another. That he was well-versed in the ins and outs of specialized victimology, all too well-versed in the nature of victimization itself.

But he couldn't speak. If he spoke he would have to open his mouth, and if he opened his mouth he knew there would be no stopping the scream.

The UnSub's hand was moving between his legs. Gently, lightly, coaxingly. The acidity of bile forced its way through the tightness in his throat, followed by strident nausea. And beneath it, impossibly, a spreading heat in the pit of his stomach. Because it was so unwanted, so misplaced, so utterly _wrong_, it twisted his intestines in a convulsive cramp. He had to exhale, if only just to keep from vomiting, and it came out a choked, barely human moan. The UnSub stilled his hand, tilted his head to the side. Waited for his triumph. Waited for the break.

Reid sucked air back into his lungs, willed the stream of oxygen to carry strength into his heart. His arms had gone numb, sandwiched between the table and the weight of two bodies, and his back and neck ached. The pain in his gut ebbed away, but the UnSub still had his hand wrapped around Reid's half-flaccid penis. When was the last time he'd had someone's hand there? When was the last time he'd…

"You really won't fight me?"

It was a quiet whisper, low and distantly amazed, as if he were speaking more to himself than to Reid. Reid knew he should answer anyway, knew he should repeat his refusal to struggle, but the words were simply not there. He couldn't find them in his mind and he couldn't arrange them as speech. If it was because he could no longer say them and mean them or because the rational part of him had finally come undone, he didn't know. He stared up at his assailant, tried to focus on the cold blue gaze instead of the hand between his legs.

He was unsuccessful in foreseeing the third kiss. Jack-knifing over him, the UnSub caught his lips before he could so much as take a breath. He shoved his tongue between Reid's teeth, pressing his mouth so forcefully onto his that Reid feared his jaw would break. The invading tongue mashed painfully against his, as if trying to push it back into his throat. Taking short, sharp breaths through his nose, he fought back that sudden feeling of disembodiment again, that sensation of dissolving into molecules. He wanted to embrace it, longed for oblivion, but knew that at this point, it would be the death of him. He endured, prayed the kiss would end, resisted the urge to bite down on the tongue spearing his mouth.

He thought he was imagining it when the hand on his genitals withdrew first. Seconds later the UnSub straightened, freeing Reid's lips, and the relief that rushed through him was almost physical, like it could lift him off the table. That nagging little hope, glowing dimly somewhere in the deep darkness, flared up in tall flames and seemed to warm his blood, letting him summon some suggestion of courage.

The UnSub was standing over him. Eyes fixed on his face again, unwavering. The clear concentration turning the washed-out blue to frozen steel was predatorily, breathlessly focused. It was the most unpleasant stare Reid had ever been subjected to. While Raphael's unfeeling gaze had been pitiless, blank like the eyes of a corpse, this was different. The stuff of fiction, he had rarely seen anything even remotely resembling it, and he had to wonder if it wasn't his fear playing tricks on him – making him see a psychopath's glare that would put Hannibal Lecter to shame. There was always some form of humanity there, some tendril of a bridge crossing the chasm that separated them from the rest, but he could see no such thing here. Only the abyss, and the half-discernible shapes of beasts in its depths.

He didn't see the blow coming. Exhibiting impressive speed, the UnSub catapulted the back of his hand across Reid's face. It set his head ringing, a high humming sound like a muted television, and it took a moment for the pain to reach him. Eyes tearing up, he tried not to think of what damage the blow had done to his teeth.

Still the UnSub kept his glare on Reid's face. This could very well be anger, Reid mused, or any number of other reactions for that matter. Unnatural stillness followed by sudden violence was clearly a favorite technique. It fit the profile, at least to some degree – rather than the unschooled fury most sexual sadists took out on their victims, this type of anger-excitation offender would often practice a more controlled violence. Refined, some might say. They would take their time, exorcise their sadism like a fine wine rather than a compulsive urge. It was a hobby, not a fix, which was why they could be difficult both to analyze and to apprehend. Thankfully, they were relatively rare as far as serial offenders went.

Not that any of this helped Reid. Knowing he was standing under the half-human stare of a criminological oddity didn't give him any consolation whatsoever, and very little to analyze. He couldn't even tell whether he had managed to provoke the subject or not, something that the profile dictated could not be done.

What it had said, what it had indicated – what Reid had worked as a method of manipulation – was that refusing to behave like a helpless victim would put him off course. Unsettle if not anger him.

Only now did it fully occur to him how risky a method it was. If the profile had been as inadequate as Reid was beginning to suspect, there was a high likelihood the UnSub would just kill him right away, discard him like an unsatisfying product. An ill-advised acquisition that didn't live up to its advertised qualities. Because he must know, as Reid had already pointed out, how deeply and truly ill-advised this whole scheme was.

There it was again, the evanescent certainty that he had left his body. In the abrupt realization that he could die painfully within the next few seconds, he was dislodged from the fragile flesh of his physical form, at once united with some kind of uncharted ether, woven momentarily into the seamless fabric of existence. For one glorious moment, he was a creature of the abstract, unable to die and to fear death.

_Do you know what this is? It's God's will._

Strong hands were lifting him by the shoulders. Heaving him off the table, easing him upright. Instinct told him to steel himself, to prepare for a fall – and sure enough, the UnSub toppled him effortlessly over. He twisted himself around mid-drop, put his back to the approaching concrete, and braced his bound arms against the impact. This time he held his breath, wouldn't let the landing knock it out of him. The skin of his hands was rubbed raw and his shoulder blades reverberated with pain, but he barely noticed. His attention was on the UnSub, a towering black figure approaching him without a trace of haste.

He squatted down on his haunches, rested lightly on the balls of his feet next to where Reid lay panting. For several seconds, he just looked. Like a big black cat, he watched the bird he had bitten the wings off trying to fly. Then he put his hand into his pocket, retrieved something that glinted unmistakably of cold steel. A flash of silver, and Reid thought of his mother.

_He who curseth..._

It was a pocket knife. Blade no longer than a couple of inches, it would be useless as any kind murder weapon. Profoundly confused, now, Reid watched the UnSub angle it aside, out of the way, before he grasped Reid's elbow and edged his back up off the floor. Reid bit his lip as the knife was slipped underneath him, and he couldn't even begin to wrap his head around how he should react when his captor began to carve through the duct tape that fettered his wrists. It was a slow process, stretching across a length of time in which Reid's thought processes, already at full capacity, found new heights of disarrangement.

"What are you doing?" he asked without expecting an answer. The UnSub finished, said unnecessarily, "This might hurt," and gave the tape a forceful tug. Reid hissed as it tore free from his skin.

He waited for the blade to disappear back into the UnSub's pocket before he retrieved his hands from behind his back. Kept otherwise still, settled for rubbing his sore wrists as he gazed up at his captor. Gradually, the burst of hope he'd felt dimmed down to a wan half-light.

Sitting back on his heels, the UnSub laced his fingers together. Reid inspected his nails, noted nothing of significance. He was sure he had felt calluses on the fingers of his right hand, and wondered distractedly what type of instrument he played. Guitar players kept their nails long, didn't they?

"You misunderstand me," the UnSub said. "You, of all people, who are supposed to know me inside out."

_They believe you can see inside men's minds._

Could he get to the knife from where he lay? In the left pants pocket, no button or zipper or other closing device that he could see. He could. Maybe.

"It's not about the physical struggle," the UnSub went on. He spoke as if to an equal, something Reid had already taken notice of, which didn't reassure him one bit. "If that was all it was, I would've stuck to taking street hustlers. I don't need you to fight me. Why do you think I have this contraption?"

He tossed his head in the direction of the table with the straps.

"It's what I see inside you that matters. What I see in your eyes."

And he lunged down, tipping himself forward to put his face close to Reid's again. Reid knotted his hands at his chest to keep them still.

"Your eyes…" He reached out to brush fingers across his forehead; for one bizarre moment, Reid could smell himself on the touch. "Your eyes are remarkable. The world inside them…"

A gentle laugh, suggesting both contentment and admiration. "It's everything I've ever looked for."

"Really?" Reid breathed. Attempting to insert the UnSub's words into the already spinning machinery in his head, he quickly came to the preliminary conclusion that he was fucked.

Literally, it would seem.

_In unchallenged possession of his victim…_

He supposed he could try to reason with him. Come to some sort of arrangement. Different courses of action ran through his mind. Hypotheses, theories, whatever – none of which led to the UnSub releasing him. None of which provided a solution. None of which helped him even in the slightest way. As it was now, his only chance appeared to be the one that was least likely to come his way. Escape.

What could he do with the knife? Stick it in his throat? Could he manage it before the UnSub broke his arm or smashed his head into the floor?

"I suppose I should let you know," the UnSub continued, "that the door at the top of the stairs is the only way out of here. It is also unlocked unless I'm on the other side of it."

Reid swallowed, resisted the urge to glance toward the stairs.

"The others all assumed it was locked, of course. When I told them it wasn't they would try so much harder to escape. It was…amusing."

A smile lighting his eyes again, he withdrew his hand from Reid's brow and sat back again. Reid wondered what else he had in his pockets. He could see an outline of something round in a large pocket above his knee; the roll of tape, presumably. Useless.

But he would bring more with him later, of course. His toys. A both wide and varied assortment of them, Reid imagined. No penknife had carved those x's into Tim Berg's thighs.

Not that there was any reason Reid would come to have some form of advantage that Tim and the others hadn't possessed. Without his gun he was just like them – a skinny, overgrown schoolboy who had never had any talent for the hand-to-hand combat he had been taught during his training, who had never even been required to take any of the classes in Krav Maga-based knife fighting techniques the bureau offered. He was a behavioral analyst, and though frequently posted in the field he had little use for such violent skills. An accurate profile was his greatest weapon, as Gideon had reminded him on more than one occasion. He could hear his voice, now, half-exasperated and endlessly amazed at the fact that not everyone had their shit together like him.

No. That wasn't fair. Not remotely fair.

_You are stronger than him._

Breathe. Just breathe. There was still time. He wasn't going to die down here.

_He cannot break you. _

If he made for the knife now and failed, there was no telling how the UnSub would react. Off the top of his head Reid would guess some form of punishment would be meted. Something advanced. While it might prompt him to take his additional equipment into the basement sooner rather than later, there was also a good chance Reid would be too incapacitated to make a successful escape sooner rather than later. Lacking a sufficiently accurate profile, he was short a weapon, and it was too hazardous a plan. Morgan might have attempted it, but then Morgan had aced every single one of those stupid classes.

With a shuffle of work boots against concrete, the UnSub lowered one of his knees to the floor. Made himself comfortable. He reached for Reid's hands, and it was only at the last moment that he remembered to keep them still. The UnSub took them into both of his just as a swiftly smothered recoil froze his fingers, held one wrist in a loose grip and used his other hand to turn it palm up. Stretched the fingers out, combed his own between them.

"I hope you've been told before that you have beautiful hands. Artist's hands."

It wasn't a compliment. The phrasing was matter-of-fact, almost stern. Filing it away into the mental compartment he had roped off for this particular UnSub, Reid thought he might have identified a speech pattern. It would appear no breath was wasted on utterances he didn't mean or see a direct purpose for; another analytical error, incidentally. The profile had indicated that the UnSub engaged in psychological torture as well as physical – if they had been correct, this meant he adopted new methods for each victim, maybe even especially adjusted them to each victim – and the level of sophistication this called for was not something Reid wanted to consider.

He studied Reid's hands for almost a full minute. Ran over the knuckles as if counting them, tested the sharpness of the overlong fingernails. Coroner's reports flitted through his thoughts again, all fifteen of them, reminding him in dry, detached print that the bodies had been found with their fingernails cut to the quick. Post-mortem.

Without a word of warning, the UnSub grasped both Reid's wrists, held them firmly in his hands. Thin as twigs, they looked fit to snap in his large fists. Then he fixed Reid with another of his feral stares. The hunger in its depths was brighter this time, like a fever, only a thin sheen of cold steel overlaying it. Reid wanted desperately to look away from it, wanted to drag himself as far away from it as possible, wanted anything but to lie here passively. The fact that he couldn't was its own torture.

Keeping his level gaze on Reid, the UnSub leaned forward again. Slowly this time, carefully. As he went, he pushed Reid's hands apart just as slowly, to either side of him and upwards, to flank his head. Pinned them there, to the icy floor. Pure, unrefined panic settled in Reid's chest, hunkered down there as if prepared to stay for good.

Still with a kind of conscientious calm, the UnSub went on to climb astride Reid's hips. Stood on all fours over him, still staring. Reid's heart was gathering speed again, banging against his ribcage, and his breaths seemed to scratch their way out of his throat, painful going in and painful coming out.

_If he doesn't perceive himself as in unchallenged possession of that complete control, in unchallenged possession of his victim…_

_You're not like the others._

He tore his eyes from the faceless head above, slanted a cursory glance at the pocket he'd seen the knife go into. If he could get his hands free, he might be able to distract the UnSub somehow long enough to get to it. Then he'd have to flip the blade out, put it somewhere soft, where it would do as much damage as possible.

Deep in the shadowy darkness, where the profiler in him still sorted through an erratic stream of data, he knew that the knife was not currently applicable to a cohesive escape plan. It was, in other words, a crap idea. But it was all he had.

_It's what I see inside you that matters._

"You don't have to – to hold me down. I said I won't fight." The words sounded false even to him.

Levering himself a fraction closer, the UnSub took a slow breath.

_Can you really see inside men's minds?_

"You're suggesting I let you go so that you can take the knife out of my pocket and – what? Stick it in my eye?"

Reid swallowed. A really crap idea, apparently.

The smile was back in the UnSub's eyes. "Genius, indeed."

"Why – why would I do that?" Reid floundered on. "That knife is practically useless; I could tell it was barely even sharp enough to cut through duct tape." He swallowed again. "You – I assume you keep it dull so that it can't be used as a weapon. Very smart."

"Shut up."

It was said without sharpness, almost kindly. It was the most aggressive expression he'd used so far, but Reid couldn't think what it might imply. Slowly feeling his composure, feigned and otherwise, slipping through his fingers, he abruptly found he could scarcely think at all. Something vital stretched taut inside him, fraying at the edges, unraveling thread by thread.

He looked up into the eyes of his captor. Looked into the abyss.

"Let me go," he heard himself whisper. "Let me go."

The UnSub's reaction was tangible. The smile remained in his eyes, but the feverish light grew denser, darkened to a stormy iron-gray. Reid felt the grip on his wrists tighten, and one breathless moment passed in the silent heartbeat before the eye of the storm closed around them.

_Choose. Choose one to die._

It was the UnSub who moved first. With the out-of-nowhere speed of a pouncing snake he twisted one of his legs to secure both of Reid's bound ones to the floor, simultaneously dropping all of his weight on him. Inside Reid's head, a kind of chaos broke out, joining together undertows of detached rationality with the frothing mess above, and he made up his mind.

Adrenaline made its way rapidly through his limbs, radiating from his solar plexus and shooting out into all the right muscles; a combination of unexpected strength and his assailant's sheer surprise allowed him to slither one hand free and propel it towards the pocket that held the knife. The UnSub gave a small grunt of astonishment before he found his reflexes and grabbed for the wayward hand, forced to lift himself up off of Reid to get better access.

But Reid's hand was already inside, his fingers already closing around the cold steel of the handle. Still possessing some kind of id-fuelled dexterity, he pulled it out, managed to slip it past the UnSub's groping hand, flicked the blade up with his thumb in the same moment it took him to locate the nearest place in which to sink it.

In the sudden, effervescent confusion of triumph and incredulity, he couldn't for the life of him understand where the other hand came from. It caught his just as the knife was less than an inch from the UnSub's neck, locked it in a grip so hard Reid could feel the bones in his wrist straining unnaturally against each other. Uttering a sharp scream, he quickly utilized his other, suddenly free hand while still retaining his hold on the knife, hurled it purposefully at the black mask. His fingernails connected with the stiff fabric, and it was their unkempt state that let him get a grasp on it. To his dismay it was secured somehow and wouldn't come off, just slipped sideways across the UnSub's face and, at best, obscured his vision somewhat. Reid could hear him breathing slightly faster, could see his lips unfolding from his teeth in a wordless snarl – almost lazily, he caught Reid's other wrist and forced both of his hands down again, crushed them into the floor. Letting out another scream, a horrible strangled cry, Reid was only distantly aware of it when his right hand unclenched around the penknife in response to the paralyzing pain. It clattered to the floor, and before Reid could do anything to renew his efforts the UnSub had rammed his knee into the tender flesh just above his groin. The pain was blinding, momentarily numbing every single function but those that processed it, and when he could perceive the world again the UnSub was climbing to his feet, releasing his hands as he went.

Gasping down breath after breath, he pushed past the purely physical nature of the pain and did his best to get his elbows onto the floor, to start a scrambling retreat away from the UnSub. It was pointless, of course; hindered by neither untamed panic, throbbing abdominal pain or restrained ankles his captor was ridiculously graceful. Measuring a kick a few inches higher than the last one, he managed to knock the air out of Reid's lungs a second time. Agony multiplying by the dozens, he curled in on himself, felt himself tipping over, crab-like, onto his side. As if from a great distance, he heard a guttural, papery sound, a sound like dying. It took him a second or two to realize that it was coming from his lips, and it wasn't until air, sweet, sweet air, was funneling back into him that he became aware of the UnSub, crouched by his side yet again.

Fingers in his hair, on his cheekbone. Pain, volumes of it, and a burning sourness at the back of his throat.

Don't. Throw up. Breathe. Just breathe.

A voice above him, murmuring words he couldn't make sense of. Prize, something about a prize.

A black silhouette in front of him, coming closer. Roughly, a child with a toy again, the UnSub grabbed his arm, reached around him to turn him over on his stomach. Breathing a pathetic _"No,"_ Reid tried to halt his hands, tried to get at him with his fingernails again, but the pain was everywhere, knotting his insides from his groin to his sternum. Making it impossible to move of his own volition. He couldn't suppress another thin scream as the UnSub edged, then rolled him around.

Once he'd gotten him on his front, the UnSub slid astride him again. Placed one elbow firmly in the center of his back, dug it sharply into the spine. Reid thrashed and flailed, clawed with his hands anywhere he could reach, but the UnSub remained unruffled; deftly, expertly, with the ease of a man performing a task he had long ago mastered, he snaked his free hand down Reid's body and hooked his thumb behind the waistband of his pants. Reid could feel his breath, heavy and hot now, on the back of his neck. Could hear his own fractured gasps, shot through with futile sounds of protest, pointless wastes of breath.

_Listen to me_.

Tobias, soft like butterfly wings. _Listen to me. _

_It's not worth fighting._

The thick edge of corduroy was eased violently down his backside. The ribbed fabric stung surprisingly on his buttocks, set the tender skin ablaze even as it was exposed to the cold subterranean air. Reid could not stop the savage scream that muscled out of him, could not refrain from taking his resistance one notch further, and focused every constituent of his being on the struggle. He drew a grunt of effort from the UnSub, but that was all. That plummeting, black desperation enveloped him, drowned him in its last throes of denial. This was not taking place. This was not feasible. This was not what they had foreseen.

This was not in the fucking profile.

_It's not worth fighting. He'll win in the end._

Fingers found their way between the cheeks. Inched them apart with enough force to make bruises.

_He'll win in the end. He'll win._

The initial penetration was beyond any level of pain he had ever experienced. His breath died in his throat, he couldn't even scream, and he felt something tear asunder right away, muscles breaking; could feel every inch of him protesting against the invasion. The UnSub was purposefully vicious, ramming into him as if intent on splitting him open, at once setting a slow pace that allowed him to get the most momentum possible behind each thrust. He grasped one of Reid's clawing hands and nailed his wrist to the floor, arched over him as he moved, his breaths coming quicker and quicker. Reid gasped down a breath of his own and exhaled in a broken cry, squeezed his eyes shut as tears leaked out without permission. The worst of the pain passed relatively quickly, something he ascribed to the lubricating effects of blood, and soon solidified itself as mainly intestinal. Pushing deeper and deeper into him, stretching its intrusion to his prostate. When he felt himself harden against the cold floor, he was distantly prepared for it.

It came over him gently, this time. Like snow. Gradually, he came loose from himself, floated further and further away from the pain. Became smoke. Incorruptible, untouchable, impersonal. It was from across a vast expanse of blissful nothing that he could hear the grunts and heaving breaths above, could feel the stabbing rhythm inside him gaining more and more urgency. It was an emptiness completely removed from the iridescent dreamscape of dilaudid, beyond the deep and unknowing stillness of sleep. When he'd stood there, over his grave in the black night of an old cemetery, ready to be laid to rest with those who already slumbered in the Southern earth, he'd felt something akin to it. Perfect escape. A sheath of glass between himself and the body forcing itself into him. Because he had felt it before, and because he had seen it described by living victims in too many books and articles and essays, he knew how to accept it now, how to let it do what it was supposed to do.

Keep him alive.

_You are stronger than him. He cannot break you. _

As the predator reached that first long-awaited release, sinking deep into the velvet warmth of his prize, Reid thought of his mother.

His mother and all the other reasons he had to survive this.

_You are stronger than him. _

_He cannot break you._

In a darkened room, surrounded by his colleagues, Jason Gideon looked up from the transcript he was examining. Gaze caught by something in the far distance, he fixed a sightless stare where the wall angled into ceiling. Motionless in his chair, his stillness roused Emily Prentiss from her own stack of witness reports.

"Gideon? You okay?"

The others stirred, too, lifted bleary red eyes to their senior profiler. Hotch even put down his pen, leaned forward a fraction.

"Gideon."

Jason Gideon took a breath. Blinked once, twice, and seemed to bring himself back to the present. Forcing half a smile, he shook his head at them.

"It's nothing. Just…" A dismissive wave of his hand, and they returned hesitantly to the task at hand. Hotch's eyes lingered, inscrutable and hard as flint.

Rubbing a pensive hand over his chin, Gideon turned his attention back to the witness statement below. One Jones, Maurice Alexander had seen something. Gideon had already made an approximation of its importance.

They were going to call him in for interrogation first thing in the morning.


	4. Chapter 4

**4**

That night he slept more soundly than he could ever remember. It was as if he made a different kind of descent, falling into thick, cushioning darkness that held no fevers, held no limitless landscapes of spiralling, crazed longing. He would always dream when he'd taken a boy, when every level of his consciousness was suffused with the enormity of what he had undertaken. He would rest fitfully, would wake in the dead of night to find himself painfully hard or already damp with climax. It was like a twisted, pubescent metamorphosis, worsening with each passing night, and he would often pass out by his desk or on the couch at some point during the day from sheer exhaustion. Bizarrely, he would relish this, too – he considered it a facet of his process that contributed a kind of artistic symmetry. Heightened the notion that what he was doing was an art in and of itself, taking up every moment of his time, waking or not, like some kind of creative frenzy.

But that night he slept like a baby. Like an innocent. Pure of mind and relieved of all worries. As though his process had reached some celestial plane of perfection that allowed for no human weaknesses. He couldn't understand it, but felt convinced it was as it should be. It had been set in stone since he'd first laid eyes on the doctor. Any plans made had not been made by him, but by whatever force was steering him through this. He wasn't even surprised anymore, not even by such a concrete change in the established order. Many surprises had been in store so far, and not all of them could be chalked up to his prize – his own behaviour had caught him off guard, as well.

Most importantly, it had not been his intention to take him by force so soon. Usually he would wait until the third or fourth descent, all to give the act as much attention as it deserved. It was a very important part of his process, arguably his favourite, and it was crucial that both he and his prey were prepared. The rest of it was only icing on the cake. Just as sweet but ultimately unsatisfying on its own.

This time had been different in every way. When he'd taken him, he had been deeper inside that wild, flaring clarity than ever before. He had acted before giving it so much as a thought, had followed the lead of some razor sharp instinct that touched upon his every nerve. As if his body had known, independently of his intellect, that the time was right. He was reminded, perhaps disturbingly, of the old story of the mother who lifts a truck with her bare hands to save the child under the wheels – it was now or never, fight or flight. The fathomless, the primal overpowering all other impulses. Not even the fumbling escape attempt, though surprising when put into context with the doctor's behaviour up until that point, had managed to shift his focus. It had happened so quickly, too quickly – had it been any of the other boys, he would've been furious with himself for losing control. For forgetting how much sweeter it was when he restrained himself. Such had not been the case this time. He had enjoyed it immensely. Afterwards, he had been calm. Serene. The complete satisfaction of that first release had wrapped around him like cotton wool, had spread its warm glow through him unhindered, marred not by a single concern over the fact that it had happened ahead of schedule. He had realized, and it seemed odd to him it hadn't come to him sooner, that there was no schedule this time. There never had been. He had gone against his every principle, had broken every one of his most crucial rules. Just the identity of his prize alone should have been enough to stop him.

None of this bothered him now. It was morning again, just after dawn, and he was long past petty anxieties. Long past the point of dry rationality, which had always been a pronounced part of both his process and his personality. His very nature, in fact. If there was anything, anything in existence, that could shift him out of himself, that could shatter his world so effectively, it was this. Now more than ever, he had absolutely no doubt that he was in the middle of something cataclysmic. That he had been taken through this life to get to where he was right now.

After he had left the basement, he had spent an unusual amount of time just mulling all this over. Head buzzing with the insight, he'd retreated to the bathroom and removed all his clothes, positioned himself in front of the mirror. He had smelled the doctor on his skin, smelled the musk of sex. He could still feel him, could summon the memory of him with frightening ease; stiffening instantly, he let a drawn-out shiver spread goosebumps all over him, a delayed aftershock of the orgasm he'd had only minutes ago. He closed his eyes and relished it. Reached up to wrap his arms around himself.

"You're mine now," he whispered to the empty bathroom, to the indifferent tiles. The feel of the hot inside of his prize seemed to whisper with it across his mind, caught in sterile, amplifying acoustics. The white, willowy body trapped between callous concrete and himself, the taut wires of muscle struggling underneath him. Rail-thin in his embrace, so easy to snap in two. Torturously beautiful in the moment of possession.

Entering him had been like nothing he had ever experienced. He had forced himself, even in the whirlwind of consuming lust, to keep from coming at that first entrance. Had actually been fleetingly surprised when he had succeeded. As though the connection of power between them was momentarily channelled both ways, as though his prize had, in that one second of insecurity, been in complete control over him. The thought wasn't altogether unpleasant. At the very least it should have given him pause, should have made him consider reassessing this stage of the process, but impossibly, he remained calm. It was all right. It was as it should be.

He showered. Cold. It would be nothing short of an insult to satisfy himself so soon after tasting his prize. He stood under the icy stream of water and willed away his erection, let the searing need dim down to a steady but gentle simmer. Let the agonizingly fresh memories fade into the fabric of his lower consciousness, where he could dip into them at will without losing himself. Where they could fulfil their purpose and keep him content. He still had work, still had appearances to keep up. His other life still needed to be maintained. It needed to be there, intact, when he was ready to live it again. He wasn't even sure he would need more prey after this. He'd harboured the same idea after last time, but now he couldn't be sure it was the delusion it had been then. This was nothing like last time. Nothing at all.

Morning. Daylight all through the house, resting on the floors he had walked, angling shadows over the furniture he had been surrounded by the past five years. The time spent here seemed distant. The house itself alien; someone else's. He paced through the rooms with a cup of coffee, looked at his bed, his television set, his wardrobe, without seeing himself there, without knowing them. Underneath his feet was all he knew, now. Underneath his feet, in the underbelly of the house that was no longer his home, was all that mattered.

He remembered this from before. This sense of coming undone. It had happened towards the end five years ago. This time, like so much else, it was stronger, more concrete. Before it had been a kind of comfort, a gentle assurance that he could move on. That he could start over somewhere else, rebuild again the soul he had put into his process.

Now it was something else. Like there would he nothing to rebuild once he was done here. Like all of him was unravelling, the ashes of him scattered on the wind.

The feeling left him numb. Vaguely confused. Looking back on his life so far, on the paths he had chosen to get here, he wasn't entirely certain he would mind. Going up in smoke. Stepping out of the mist a different man. Perhaps not a man at all.

Draining the last of the coffee, he shook himself loose from these thoughts. Took them for what they were; just thoughts.

He walked the dog, did a few hours of work. Spoke briefly with an acquaintance on the phone. Around noon he settled down by the computer with a hastily prepared lunch. Passing the cursor over the video files, he opened the internet and proceeded to read one of the doctor's dissertations as he ate. It was on chemistry and little more than Greek to him, but he focused on the turns of phrase, the nuggets of personality he could unearth in the text.

After he had done the dishes he found himself standing in front of the basement door, staring at the doorknob. He itched to descend again. It wasn't yet unbearable, and he had always preferred to wait until it was. Taking slow breaths, he returned to the computer.

He'd just sat down when the sound of the doorbell thoroughly startled him. Quickly shutting down and securing the computer, he got to his feet. As he crossed to the hall he ran through in his head the options of who might be seeking him out at this hour. The list was very short.

The dog was on the doormat, quiet and vigilant. He pointed him back to the other end of the hall and opened the door.

It was his neighbor.

"Hi," came the awkward greeting. "I'm David, David Malcolm – I live across the street."

"Yeah, I know," replied the predator, hitching a polite smile onto his face. "We spoke the day before yesterday. About the Knicks, remember?"

"Right," said David Malcolm, "Sure. Yeah. I was just…"

He looked sideways, squinting into the sun. Pointed vaguely in the same direction and went on, "I was getting my mail, and I saw that your car still had the keys in it."

He held said keys up. The predator stared at them, glinting dully in Malcolm's hand.

Several seconds passed before he could think to reply. Hoisting some semblance of sense from a suddenly muted mind, he forced the words to take shape. They came out with the slightest tremble; "Really? Oh my God."

He took the keys. They were cold on his palm. "That's so odd. I've never done that before."

"You haven't?" David Malcolm gave a snort of laughter. "I've done it like three times. Now I've got a button, so I can't anymore. Left the phone in the freezer once or twice, too."

"It's just…I've never been scatter-brained," the predator said, quietly. He couldn't stop staring at the keys in his hand.

David Malcolm was frowning. "You okay?"

The predator tore his gaze from the keys. Fixed it on the man on his doorstep. Short brown hair, tanned skin, white teeth. Small goatee. Sweatpants and flip-flops.

"Thank you," he told him. Tried and failed to summon another polite little smile. "Very much."

"No problem," said David Malcolm airily. "I don't think anyone would've even seen it before you noticed it yourself, but…"

"You did."

"Yeah. That's true." He hesitated. "To be honest, I was checking the car out. It's new, right? You used to have a van, didn't you?"

The predator cleared his throat. "Actually, it was a rental. My own went bust six months ago. They couldn't fix her, so I had to get a new one. Old as dirt, but she runs okay."

"Oh. Okay." David Malcolm smiled again, and whatever interest might have compelled him to ask in the first place visibly drained from his features. He was backing down the front walk, hands in his pockets. "So I'll see you around. Hold on to those keys, now."

Finally, the predator managed a smile. "Will do. And thanks again."

"Any time."

And he was gone. The predator watched him down the street for a moment before closing the door, the car keys clutched so tight in his hand they cut into the flesh. He leaned against the door, pooling all his focus. Aware of every breath that entered his lungs, every loud thud of his heart.

He managed to get his wits aligned in less than a minute, and unexpectedly, when he could think again, his mind seemed to have centered around one single thought.

Why didn't this bother him more?

A week ago it would've driven him to wrap up the process right away and cut his losses. He would've packed up his things, smashed and disposed of his computer, killed the boy in the basement. Washed and cleaned him inside out, cut his fingernails, gone over every hair on his body with a delousing comb. Laid him down somewhere where he would be found within hours, so that anyone with a reason to wonder would know what had happened to him.

Now, such a reaction seemed vastly exaggerated. Uncalled for.

Pushing himself off the door, he stepped up to the nearest window and looked out at his car. The former owner had taken good care of it. He had been able to find it very quickly, something he had seen as another strike of fortune.

No other boy had affected him like this; that much was already established. The madness before he had fetched him, the disintegration of his schedule, the deep and untroubled sleep after having first tasted him. As he stared through the clear pane of glass at the car on the driveway, he came to the conclusion that some level of distraction was only to be expected. That he should be grateful it had been something as innocuous as a set of car keys left in the lock. It could have been worse. Much worse. He knew all too well the mistakes he had already learned from in the past.

Resolving with a certain fierce determination to be more attentive from now on, he ambled back into the house, to the doorway through which he could see the black screen of the computer. He had been intending to watch the live feed for a few minutes, just to stave off the descent. He couldn't recall, now, why he'd felt obligated to. More than ten hours had passed since he'd laid eyes on his prize.

So, with that same suspended anticipation thick in his chest, he booted the computer up a second time, with a different plan in mind.

The live stream, brightly lit, consumed his vision. There he was, perched on the lid of the toilet seat. Cross-legged, he looked to be surprisingly comfortable, back straight against the wall and head tilted back. The predator had seen him recline with similar ease on park benches, in cheap plastic restaurant chairs, in the crowded backseats of cars. Such a long, lanky frame should defy all forms of litheness, but the doctor carried his with unselfconscious ease. Like he was barely aware of it. Like it didn't matter to him.

The predator realised the irony of that would never occur to him.

His eyes were open, but appeared quite sightless. Staring from under heavy lids into the vacant air. In one of his hands he held the chain, raising it off the ground to take the weight off his foot. There was no padding on the ankle bracelet that the chain was fastened to, but the doctor had stuffed the hem of his trousers underneath the steel edge as best he could. His bare feet – the predator had taken his shoes and his mismatched socks – were as white and still as his face.

In placing himself on the toilet seat, he had taken the length of the chain as far as it would go. It was bolted to a far corner of the room, allowing for passage to the facilities and up the first three steps of the stairs. When it wasn't in use, the predator kept it coiled on a device underneath the table that he had constructed especially for this purpose, so as to avoid his prey utilizing it as a weapon.

The doctor hadn't protested when it had been secured around his ankle. On his stomach on the floor, he'd scarcely even reacted when the predator had pulled out of him and gotten to his feet. He'd remained motionless, silent but for broken, laboured breaths and the odd cough. Had stared at nothing much like he was doing now when the rest of the duct tape was cut away, when his underwear and trousers were pulled back into place. When the predator had smoothed a hand down his tousled hair, folding it behind his ear; when he'd leaned close and whispered, "I'll be back before you know it."

He had seen this before, of course – after the first violation, almost all of them had been unnaturally still. Dazed with the intoxication of his release, he had made a point of observing them in those precious moments after he had taken them, and in this aspect, the doctor had, for once, been like the others. The predator had expected nothing else. Between his professional life and his previous experiences, it was clear his prize's survival instincts had been honed to near perfection.

Presently, the predator took a headset from a desk drawer, plugged it in and hooked it around his ear. He grasped the mouse and clicked his way into the proper directories, waited for a soft static to filter through. Then he spoke into the microphone.

"You haven't washed."

Before he had finished the sentence, his prize was on his feet. A second, perhaps two, passed before he turned to look up at the camera, the alarm that had started him upright fading like the sudden flare of lighting.

He had most likely located the miniscule camera lens hours ago, maybe as early as when the predator had first switched on the lights before the first descent. Now he stared into it, stared unknowingly into his captor's eyes, and folded his arms protectively across his ribs. He did not cower, did not withdraw towards the wall, but still he seemed to crawl into himself, something dark and thorny closing around him. It was new, this fear, unsophisticated, too vague and intrinsic to suppress. The first fine spider web of cracks in virgin white china. The sight of it was too much, snatched the predator's breath and voice right out of his throat. For one terrifying instant, he thought he would be crushed under the weight of his need.

It was the sound of his prize's voice that brought him back to himself. The sweet, sweet sound, carrying the same beautiful despair.

"Were…were you expecting me to?"

Shuffling half a step closer, he let his hands drop; the predator noted that he had buttoned his shirt all the way up. Caught off guard by his question, he decided not to reply. Instead he waited for him to speak again, certain, somehow, that he would.

"It's what the others did, isn't it? They showered. When you didn't return for hours, they…they couldn't stand not washing you off. It didn't matter that you might be watching, if they guessed as much. If they saw the camera."

Another hesitant step. A certain care could be noticed in the movement, now, a certain attentiveness to his injuries. "Some of them probably even tried to wash their clothes. Tried to…"

The words disappeared into a sharp inhalation. He looked away from the camera, as if he could feel the predator's eyes on him. At his sides his hands had become fists. He didn't speak again. Had he suddenly decided it was more than his captor deserved?

Fascinated, the predator tugged the headset off. Stared another few seconds at his motionless prey, then forced himself to turn off the stream. Killed the computer again, secured it, got to his feet. Headed with purposeful calm for the closet, where he donned the clothes and put on the mask. Slid the bag that held his tools from the shelf above.

Then he descended again.

* * *

Maurice Jones couldn't be reached until late that afternoon. The messages left at his home and workplace, they were informed, had gone unheeded for reasons unknown. Like many young single people, he clearly felt no need to be available for contact at all hours of the day.

"I don't have a deadline right now," he said with a dry smile once they had sat him down in an available room. "I tend to abuse the freedom."

Agents Morgan and Gideon were not amused. Testy and brooding, their very presence seemed to electrify the air. Morgan wasn't even sure he remembered how to smile.

"You're a contractor?" Gideon asked, pretending to look in the pages of a file on the table in front of him. "Self-employed?"

Maurice Jones sighed. He had been forced to wait for the agents over half an hour and exuded prickly impatience. His hair, dark and fashioned in the overlong style that in recent years had come to identify the self-assured, comfortably scruffy man, was on end, his clothes of the couch-lounging kind; witnessing of a certain disregard of other people's opinions, even those of the FBI. Five o'clock shadow on his jaw.

"I have my own company, yes," he told Gideon tartly. Then he leaned forward, eyes shifting from agent to agent. "Why? And why am I here? I told you everything once already. I wrote it down."

"Yes, you did." Gideon flipped through the file again. "You saw a van."

"That's right. I saw a dark van driving away from where they found that kid."

"While you were walking your dog."

"While I was walking my dog. See, you've got it right there."

He gestured at the file in front of Gideon. The agent raised his eyebrows, glanced down into the pages.

"Here? No, no. This is…" And he slid something out of the file; a sheaf of photographs held together by a single paperclip. "This isn't your statement, Mr. Jones."

With seeming off-handedness, he tossed the bundle into the middle of the table. Continued to search for something else altogether in the dossier, as if he couldn't care less about what he had just placed in front of Maurice Jones.

Puzzled and curious and just a little bit apprehensive, Jones leaned forward in his chair. A slow hand crept towards the photographs, most of which had come loose from the paperclip. "What…"

A moment in which he went completely still, then, as he became aware of what he was looking at, a violent recoil. His chair scraped against the linoleum as he pushed back from the table, head swivelling sideways and features twisting in a grimace. "Oh, God."

Gideon had abandoned the folder and now gave Jones his full attention. A subtle frown was allowed to frame his razor sharp gaze. "Is something wrong?"

His initial repulsion fading as rapidly as it had overtaken him, Jones faced the agent again. Shot a wild glance Morgan's way, confirming that the younger man had not reacted at all. Two sets of hawk eyes fixed on him, relentlessly searching.

Displaying a level of intelligence that had previously been undetectable, he took a breath and said incredulously, "I'm a suspect?"

No answer. Just unwavering dark eyes staring right through him.

"You wouldn't show me – that," – a nervous motion at the photographs without looking at them – "if I wasn't a suspect. Right?"

Where before there had been a subtle but palpable disrespect, there was now a certain subordination. Gideon and Morgan had both seen it before; the next stage would be anger.

Jones shifted on his chair. "You're out of your minds. Why would I want to do that to a bunch of kids?"

"They're grown men, Mr. Jones," said Morgan quietly. "Between the ages of twenty-one and thirty. If you look at the pictures you'll see that quite clearly."

"I'm not a psychopath," Jones said; indignation had strapped a visible tension across his shoulders. "Yes, I'm gay. Are you going to harass every single gay man in this city, now? Should I call my friends and warn them? I do get a phone call, right?"

"You're not under arrest," said Gideon. "You get all the phone calls you want."

"Oh, good," Jones scathed. During this exchange, his eyes had flickered not once, but twice to the photographs. There lay Tim Berg, spread-eagled on black tarmac; a prostitute had discovered him amidst the customary scattering of used condoms and cigarette butts. Adam Morrison, half-sitting against a brick wall on the fringes of a parking lot; a group of students using a well-travelled shortcut had stumbled across him on their way to class. Kyle Horowitz, glazed eyes staring sightlessly into the underside of a bridge; the first batch of commuters arriving at the nearby bus stop had easily picked the chalk white body out of the roadside brambles. Michael Preston, the first victim to be connected with the Riverside killings, dumped beside a bicycle path and found by a jogger; Silas O'Rourke, another alley, leaving a pair of six-year-old girls traumatized; and Joshua Hale, found by the cleaning staff behind a restaurant. It had been estimated that only hours could have passed since their murderer had put them there. The dark van seen driving from two of these sites had been a ghost throughout the investigation, irking the police to no end.

"There are two black vans registered to your company, Mr. Jones. For transporting equipment, I assume?"

Jones met Gideon's eyes with a kind of feverish alarm. "What?"

"Which way did the van really go that night, Maurice?" Morgan asked in a near-gentle voice. "Did it go up Morrow Street? Are you absolutely certain?"

"Okay," Jones exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. Anger manifested, right on schedule. "I've had enough of this. This is bullshit. Why would I give information about a dark van if I own two of them myself? That's just stupid. I'm not that stupid."

"You stated that it looked older than your own vans, Mr. Jones," Gideon pointed out. "Which strikes me as quite clever. Quite sophisticated. If you had killed these men, that is."

He reached across the table and spread the photographs out, gave a clearer view of the bruises blooming across Michael Preston's buttocks, the 'mine' on Joshua Hale's back, the missing toenails on one of Silas O'Rourke's feet. Disgust touched a feathery flicker across Jones' face, but he didn't look away. Transfixed.

Morgan moved closer, carefully so as not to disturb the sudden stillness. "They're men, but they look like boys. Don't they? Slender. Smooth skin." He was at the table; Gideon handed him something from the file. Another photograph. "Soft and hairless like women."

He placed the photo on top of the others. "It's how you like them, isn't it? Like this."

Jones shifted his half-bewildered, half-frightened gaze to the picture. Misja Ibramovic lounged smilingly on a park bench under the green ceiling of a tree. It had been taken shortly after his undocumented arrival in the states, when he was still oblivious of the type of profession he was soon to be in. He had been eighteen. At twenty he stepped into a green four-door sedan, motioned through the window to the two boys still on the sidewalk that he would call them, and was not seen again until a boat owner literally tripped over him in a shipyard seven days later.

Gideon took out another photo, handed it to Morgan. It landed on top of Misja with a soft whisper of paper against paper. "Like this," Morgan said again, and he was already taking a new photograph from Gideon. Jones had time to see Christopher Early, seated in a dirty diner booth with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, before he was faced with Silas O'Rourke, shirtless in a photo taken by his girlfriend; Kevin Silvestri, posing with awkward reluctance on the street corner where he had done most of his business, and Michael Preston, carrying on his shoulders his laughing six-year-old daughter. "Like this," Morgan said a third time and tossed another photograph onto the pile.

Jones' expression hadn't changed throughout this display, nor did it change now. He stared down at Spencer Reid, at the long graceful hands folded on the glossy surface of a bar next to a tumbler of brandy. Soft brown eyes fixed on something else, not the camera, he looked relaxed and at ease, clearly unaware that it was even there. Tie loose, a glimpse of a white collar bone, lips slightly parted in a heavy-lidded, peaceful smile.

"Like this," Morgan repeated one last time, and now Jones shifted in his chair. After a brief moment of puzzled stillness, he leaned over the final picture Morgan placed in front of him, his indignation momentarily outmanoeuvred. It was Spencer Reid again, just his face, gazing seriously through a thin film of stiff plastic.

"Supervisory special agent…" Jones murmured as he read the title on the FBI identification card, eyes widening ever so slightly. He reached across to the mess of photos, slid out the one underneath the card. Reid at a bar again, Reid at peace. Garcia had taken the picture. "It's the same guy," Jones said. "This – this is the FBI agent he snatched?"

He looked up at Gideon and Morgan, incredulous once more. "You're letting me see this? You didn't even tell the press."

"We're confident it'll leak out very soon. It always does," said Gideon off-handedly. "This particular agent has been abducted by a murderer before. It leaked out then, too."

The shock this statement should have inspired didn't come. Jones seemed numb. Paralyzed. He appeared not to have heard Gideon.

"You…you really think I did this? How the fuck did you…? Why? Why the hell do you think I did this?"

An unsteady breath. Hands through his hair. Almost visibly, he gathered his wits. Anger again. "I want to know what kind of proof you think you have to implicate me. I saw a van, I – I don't have a fucking thing to do with this! It's ridiculous! You're so far off the reservation it's scary!"

It came like lightning from a clear sky; an explosion of movement as a large, black hand slammed down onto the table. The bang was deafening, and Jones jumped so high that his chair teetered briefly on one leg.

"Look at him!" Morgan boomed and pushed the photo of Reid into Jones' face. "He is a federal agent. A cop. Anyone who touches a hair on his head is in for a world of pain inconceivable even to the animal who did this."

He slammed the picture back down amidst the crime scene photos. "This pathetic, rapist piece of shit will wish he was dead when we get our hands on him. Because believe me, we will get our hands on him. You see, when one of our own is targeted we have a tendency to throw the rules out the window. We have a tendency to throw politics out the window. We have a tendency to disregard all the bullshit we have to think about in any other case, like securing an eventual trial. Procedure, policy, precaution – they don't matter anymore. All that matters is getting our agent back safe and sound. At any cost."

Maurice Jones had gone rigid in his chair. Leaning as far away from Morgan as he could, he stared, wide-eyed, up at the furious agent. "You've got the wrong guy," he breathed weakly. "I swear. I saw a van. I just…"

"You can go," Gideon suddenly spoke up. Throughout Morgan's tirade he had remained passive, indifferent. Still he looked nothing short of bored.

Morgan shot his superior a long look before pushing away from the table and retreating once more to the wall. The fury was still there, crackling on the air around him, and Jones swallowed nervously.

"I can?"

"Yes. If we need anything else from you we'll be in touch."

Hesitantly, Jones got to his feet. When he was at the door, Gideon spoke again.

"What kind of dog do you have?"

"What?" Wild-eyed, Jones turned around. "What kind of…"

"Dog. What kind of dog do you have?"

"A…uh, she's a…terrier mix. Got her from a pound."

Gideon offered a shadow of a smile. "Goodbye, Mr. Jones."

* * *

He was waiting in the middle of the floor. The predator could hear the rustling of the chain even as he descended, could hear his prey's passage into the most open part of the basement. A demonstration of his confidence, be it feigned or genuine. Once again he was reminded of the whores, how they had attempted to manipulate him, provoke him, do the opposite of what they thought he expected of them. A stubborn refusal to be a victim. It had always fascinated him – how they were actually embracing their role, how they unwittingly played it with the ingrained skill of habit. At the hands of strangers or kin, they had been victims for as long as they could remember and had no other light to see things in. This was, of course, not the case with the doctor. There ended the likeness.

If it was possible, he looked even more beautiful this time. Bathed in the glaring overhead light, his skin was translucently white, soft and fragile like glass. A fist-sized bruise was blossoming across the right side of his jaw where the predator had back-handed him, and his golden brown locks were mussed and disheveled. Eyes rimmed with shadows, the whites shot through with webs of red. Contained there was the new fear, the new mess of emotions he would not be able to hide behind the mask of composure that he clearly still had the ability to maintain. The predator was impressed. This, too, he had seen before, if not as cohesively – the initial tryst, leaving no doubt in his mind as to why he was here, had infused him with the renewed strength of acceptance. The predator had to smile at the sight of it. It was a resistance that broke so beautifully, so completely, leaving a kind of essence, a kind of truth. Like stripping faded linoleum from a marble floor.

The doctor took notice of the bag as soon as he had stepped into the room. Panic rippled across his carefully arranged features but vanished just as quickly; he had doubtless known that this would happen.

Putting the bag down on the steps behind him, out of his prey's reach, the predator ambled closer. Looked into his captive's eyes and held them. The doctor didn't look away, but the effort it took him was visible.

"Are you still bleeding?" the predator asked. Watched his prize swallow once, twice, before managing an answer.

"No."

The predator paced sideways and around him to see for himself.

Coming back to face him, he tilted his head to the side and allowed himself a contented sigh.

"Good. Now strip."

Again, a glimmer of panic. A succession of wild glances in the direction of the bag on the stairs. No trace of any intention to obey.

The predator stepped closer. Noted and savoured the visibly suppressed recoil freezing that long, rangy body to the floor.

"Either you take your clothes off, or I will have to force them off you. Your choice."

Another moment of silence, thick with that inexplicable obstinacy. Then, a certain frustration mingling with the stone cold dread, he began to unbutton his shirt.

It unfolded with a near-preternatural clarity, all razor sharp contours and pulsing colours, that had by now become very familiar. Heat dispersing with the speed of a flash flood through his limbs, sweet and aching and completely consuming. He could feel him, could feel his nerves stretching taut at the memory of him, of being inside him, and he had to take a deep breath to steady himself.

He was going too fast. Once started with the buttons, he rushed down the row as if keen to have it over with.

"Slowly," the predator said and was distantly surprised to hear a tremulous voice leave his lips. The doctor stopped altogether, face unnaturally still, before undoing the last two buttons with obedient delay. He slipped the shirt off, let it fall to the floor. His eyes were anywhere but on the predator, his features set but thinly shrouded in panic. It was the type of fear that would put tears in your eyes whether you suppressed it or not – though none glittered in his prize's eyes he could see the promise of them, half-discernible beyond the mask.

Wraith white chest now bare, the doctor was breathing too fast and too deep, stare nailed to the patch of floor that separated him from his captor. As he moved his hands down to his zipper they were shaking so bad that he couldn't seem to get a grasp on the little brass-coloured buttons. Twice he tried and failed; a sharp exhalation escaped him, not quite a whimper. His need dancing all over him like electricity, the predator had to force himself to stay where he was. Patience. Patience was crucial. He would not lose it again.

At last the doctor managed it; with an awkwardness that he otherwise rarely displayed he edged his cords down his legs and stepped out of them, the chain snaking and rustling through the folds of fabric. The predator would cut them from the chain rather than let his prize put them back on, but not until later. Much later, if everything went as planned.

Not that it had so far.

In nothing but his boxers, the doctor straightened and clasped his hands protectively over his crotch. Another secret smile tugged at the predator's mouth, and he had to say it, as he'd said it to so many of the others –

"All of it."

"No," came the swift reply, in a small and shaky voice. "You're going to have to force me. I won't."

"You will."

"No."

The predator opened his mouth to protest, again, before he realised what he was doing. Incredibly, he felt inclined to allow himself yet another smile. He was arguing with him.

How had the others carried themselves through this stage of the process? This little pocket of time, this one descent of many. After he had been inside them, after he had given them a first taste of being owned completely in body if not in soul. They had been angry, many of them. Filled with a defiance not unlike what he was currently witnessing in the doctor's stiff posture, in his clenched jaw, in his glassy stare. They had shouted. Raged and stormed. Let me go. Let me go, let me go, I'll kill you. And when this had failed, they had begged. Bargained, pleaded. Please don't kill me. I haven't seen your face, I don't know where we are. Let me go. Let me go.

"Fine," he heard himself say, quite mildly. Then he was moving, springing into a swift step almost before he had decided to. Through his looking glass of clarity he saw the doctor move, stumble backwards over the chain and the pants wrapped around it, bare feet whispering across the concrete. He did not speak, did not cry out; simply gasped in surprise when his wrists were wrung from his body and forced apart to either side of him, when he was jerked into motion by a strength far beyond his own and turned stumblingly around. The predator kept him moving, kept him upright even as his balance crumbled under him, and ushered him across the basement to where the table stood ready and waiting.

Unexpectedly, there was a scuffle as he pushed him back against it in order to muscle him onto the polished surface. Yesterday he had simply folded him over the edge to keep him still, but now, when he had to lay him down flat, he had more room to struggle. Wordless snarls escaped him, a first visceral sign of his ravaged pride, and he got one hand free to clamp it around the predator's throat. He had a strong grip, much stronger than you would've thought, but the predator already knew this from experience. Deftly ignoring the sudden lack of air in his lungs, he used his captive's distraction to shove him roughly onto his back on the table. Something that could have been _no _tore out of the doctor's throat, a guttural, animal sound, and even with those long claws pressing his windpipe the predator could not help but relish it, could not help but let it seep its sweet music into the very depths of him. He loved this part. He didn't always get to enjoy it, as they were all so different, but when they struggled like this, when they gave in to their precious vanity, he wanted them so much it manifested as physical pain. The doctor was no different. He could feel that tendon of power again, that fickle, pulsing line stretching between them, its unrelenting light shivering in both directions if only for a fraction of a second. His need, burning and searing and threatening its premature release with frightening intensity, strained against his trousers.

Once he had him on the table, getting control of his flailing limbs wasn't overly complicated. It took focus and brute force, but he still managed to relish every writhing movement, every stretching length of sinewy muscle underneath satiny skin, every panicked, ragged breath. Still he fought. Still he had no idea that he belonged to the predator, now. Still he was a whole, still he was intact, unbroken. For how long would he remain so?

He had to climb on top of him to get it done, but get it done he did. A rough minute later he had him in restraints, had him strapped by wrists and ankles to the table. He was winded, especially after his prey's little throttling attempt, but giddily happy like a child.

"There we are," he leaned down to mutter in the doctor's ear. "All better."

He was twisting his head away, his mask of control all but a shambles. His breath came thin and broken, like he'd just run the proverbial marathon, but it was anger he was fighting, anger and fear, not dissolution. Not yet.

The predator settled himself more comfortably astride his prize. Let him feel his arousal press against his stomach. He wanted him, now, wanted him like a thirsting man wants water, but felt confident he would be able to hold back this time. This time he would be patient. He had already taken him once; the first release was achieved. He could take his time.

Pinching his chin between thumb and forefinger, the predator stole a kiss. The doctor let a cry escape him, muffled by his captor's mouth, and the predator had to pull swiftly away as he opened his lips to bite him. Allowed himself a chuckle as he went.

"What happened to not fighting me? Did you reach a different conclusion?"

The doctor glared up at him through a mist of fear. Gritted his teeth and replied, "Pretty much."

"Good. I'm pleased. You were wrong, after all."

No answer. Smiling a blissful smile underneath his own mask, the predator slipped off his prey with some reluctance. Dropping to the floor, he bent down to gather the chain, rolled it up on its specially crafted hook. Bundled the corduroy pants up so that they could be cut off later and locked it all into place, out of the way, before straightening and returning to the stairs to retrieve the bag.

His breath was stilling now. His whole body was filling with the focused joy of his purpose. He was at work again. He was alive again. Responding to his calling, answering to the incessant, tangled instructions of fate. Destiny was in the air. Destiny was on a table before him, so gloriously beautiful it made him ache inside, in whatever passed for his soul. White as milk, the marks and bruises of the predator's ownership scattered across his otherwise flawless skin. Lips swollen and red, parted around the strained breaths whispering out of his long, graceful throat; doe eyes lit by all the intricate levels of his tumbling, whirling emotions, the dimensions of fear and despair and a distant promise of surrender.

He was so much more than the others. All the others combined. All the boys, every single boy over this past decade and the ones before, the unknown ones. His work would culminate here. This was all of it. The only meaning, the only truth.

As he stood there, over the beautiful form of his destiny with the weight of his tools hanging from his hand, he let himself acknowledge what he had known all along.

That he loved Spencer Reid.

* * *

**Evidence log**

**Item #153 – Digital video recording found in domicile of M. Jones**

**Following is a transcript - -**

**Scene is rectangular room, windowless, painted white. SSA Reid located in northeast corner of room, seated on floor. Undressed, numerous signs of injury. Bleeding appears profuse, stains on various locations throughout room. SSA Reid appears unconscious or asleep. **

**Unidentified subject enters frame. Black, indeterminable clothing, black mask, facing away from camera. **

**Subject - - Wake up.**

**SSA Reid [audibly weak] - - No. Let me sleep. I'm tired. **

**Subject - - You need to wake up.**

**Subject approaches SSA Reid. SSA Reid opens eyes; appears to look at subject. **

**SSA Reid - - Why? Are you going to [inaudible]**

**Subject is at SSA Reid's side. Subject crouches down; appears to touch SSA Reid's face. **

**Subject - - It's time.**

**SSA Reid [closes eyes] - - Please. Don't.**

**Subject [agitated] - - It's time to say goodbye. Let me say goodbye.**

**Subject handles SSA Reid; moves him away from corner and pushes him onto floor, face down. SSA Reid heard whimpering.**

**Subject - - Let me say goodbye. Let me say goodbye.**

* * *

The second time was worse. He had thought it wouldn't be, but he had failed to incorporate the additional variables that had come into the equation since last time. He was bleeding from a collection of shallow but precise scalpel cuts on his lower abdomen, where the UnSub had spent some ten minutes; a bite mark on his neck had bled for approximately thirty seconds before it had been cauterized with a Marlboro cigarette that the UnSub hadn't taken more than one drag from; his forearm was lacerated (some kind of serrated blade had been used, it had hurt more than the scalpel), and his genitals were swollen and sore from expert but cruel handling.

The second time was also rougher than the first, if that was possible. It was faster, more hurried, almost desperate in nature. He had managed quite easily to turn the injured and anaemic Reid onto his stomach on the table and strap him down again, had been able to position himself as he pleased now that Reid couldn't struggle. After cutting his boxers off with a pair of scissors, he had chosen to hold him by the hips, lifting him up off the table as he half-stood behind him. The thrusts had been quick, short, effective. It was almost as if he needed to have it done in order to pace himself with his blades. He had hacked out guttural, desperate cries as he moved, cries that sounded unnervingly like pleas, had dug his teeth into his shoulder several times – wounds he would later burn beyond recognition – and had bitten a chunk of skin right out of him when he climaxed.

He had returned to his idling torture soon after, not even leaving the basement in between. He had used the toilet, had washed his hands, and had then continued with the scalpel – winding cuts along his spine, this time, cuts that weren't likely to scar if they ever had a chance to.

Then there was the third time. Slower, longer, more controlled. It had taken him forever. He had left the basement after that, and Reid had only just barely let himself relax on the table when he was back again.

The fourth time must have lasted an hour.

He was only half-conscious when he was released from the restraints. The UnSub left him there, unbound, and made his exit without a word.

The basement was rank, the stench of his own body thick and putrid in his throat as he attempted to breathe normally. He thought he might have a vague notion of how many hours he had spent with the UnSub, but had no wish to explore that notion. Every inch of him stung, ached or burned. His entire rectal area felt like it was in shreds, and he knew he was bleeding, could feel the hot slickness between his thighs. If it was internal he might die before the UnSub was finished with him. It was how several of his previous victims had perished.

Minutes passed before he felt secure in moving. Swimming somewhere halfway between wakefulness and comatose darkness, he dragged himself onto the floor, away from the cursed table, let the pain melt into one single entity, one force he could fight one-on-one. Let the part of him that had been entered and broken fade into the rest of it, into the burns and the cuts and the bruises. Focused on it, delved into it. Willed the other, the hands that had held the blades, the organ that had been inside him, away. Willed it to fade into that greater, more concrete power. The physical had to overtake the sentient, or he knew he'd come undone right here and now.

He was still in one piece. One damaged piece, but still one. He had known this would come. He had known what had happened to the others.

_In unchallenged possession of his victim…_

The others had not been prepared. The others, the six victims he had come here to seek justice for, had not been federal agents. They had been students, web designers, engineers. Not geniuses by any stretch of the imagination. Bright, yes, but not as bright as him. Not like him.

Not like him.

_You know why I chose you._

_You're not like the others._

Reid crawled to the wall, laid himself down here on his side, favouring his wounds as best he could.

He was there, sure enough, hulking in the darkness. Deepest night cloaking him, but he was there. The profiler. Dry, rational thoughts spilling into the wild landscape of pain. And there was Raphael, great wings casting black shadows across the raw and cracked grounds of his mind. Cogs and wheels so still they were almost not moving at all. Almost.

_They believe you can see inside men's minds._

Tobias, soft murmurs on the surface of it all. _Listen to me._

_Listen. He cannot break you._

Dark, thick bliss came at him from the deeps. Tobias' touch in the crook of his arm, innocent and without want. Dilaudid wrapping its empty warmth around him. He was no more. No more. None of it was anymore.

_You are stronger than him. You are stronger…_

_Stronger…_

And he slept.

* * *

**Evidence log**

**Item #182 – 1 intact sample of DNA [semen] recovered at Site #7; inside Victim #7 Reid, Spencer. **

**Sample is viable. Sample failed match to state and federal DNA databases. Match to related samples pending.**


	5. Chapter 5

**5**

"I don't know why. I just think it's weird, is all."

David's girlfriend repeated the look she had already given him three times since he brought it up. Two thirds amusement and one third exasperation, with just a pinch of condescension thrown in for good measure. He hated that look. For a cop's daughter she was startlingly averse to the notion of gut feelings.

"The man traded in his expensive rental for a fully functioning used car," she replied. "You're right, it's a mystery. One for the history books, for sure."

"Oh, shut up." Turning his attention from the stack of bills he had been perusing, he dared a look of his own. "Why do you have to do that?"

"What?" she squeaked, all sweetness again. "I just –"

"I am not saying that my next door neighbour is Jeffrey freaking Dahmer, okay? I mentioned, in passing mind you, that he'd gotten rid of a van not unlike the one they described on that press conference."

"The press conference held by a pretty young blonde," Liddy muttered, giving the orange she was peeling a forceful tug. "You wouldn't believe how many of the guys at work watched that thing."

David couldn't suppress a snort of laughter. "And that's relevant to this fight how, exactly?"

"Oh, this is a fight?"

"Funny. But seriously, you don't think it's worth at least a fleeting thought?"

"I've met this Jones guy, too. He's not a serial killer."

"See, that's the thing. You couldn't possibly know that. This evil piece of shit is apparently real sophisticated in how he carries himself out in the real world. He knows exactly how to evade suspicion."

"'Evade suspicion?' You really like that blonde, don't you?"

He took a breath, wasting an absent second wondering why he was having this conversation – or fight, as it were. It was this little dance of theirs, this petty snapping, that had put a sneaking suspicion in the back of his mind that he either had to pop the question soon or disappoint his mother with another failed relationship.

"Just humour me," he said, purposefully lowering his voice to a mild murmur. "What if I were to go over there and, I don't know, invite him to dinner. To a party. Told him to bring a date." A smile quirked his lips. "How might he react, do you think?"

"Like any sane person would," Liddy replied disinterestedly. "He'd politely decline ."

David sighed. Ripped open his phone bill and grimaced at it. "So what's a serial killer like, then?"

"Not like that guy," Liddy said confidently, as if she'd met every single one of them. "My dad worked on a serial case once when he was new on the force, and he told me about it when I got older. If they're smart, they're all quiet and nondescript; charming and well-mannered. Artfully bland, invisible. It's how they get away with it long enough to earn the whole 'serial' designation in the first place."

David allowed himself another sigh. "Jones wears vintage band shirts."

"Exactly. He has a personality."

"And a dog."

"A beautiful dog," Liddy added emphatically. "The only bland thing about him is his last name."

David said again, already more interested in his phone bill than the so-called fight. He was sure he could fit an engagement ring into his budget right now. No problem.

* * *

That same evening, in the hours after his and Morgan's encounter with Maurice Jones, Jason Gideon could be found in no less than twelve different interviews with twelve different men, all of whom had come forward as witnesses over the course of the investigation. One of them had once passed through a string of foster homes in the city where the UnSub had killed his first known victims; another had an ex-wife there. Two of them had given lectures at the university that four of the most recent victims had attended, and one of those two had in turn once been accused of sexual harassment by a male colleague.

By nightfall, four homes were being searched and two more warrants were awaiting signatures. The officers and detectives sent into the houses and apartments, Liddy's father among them, did not so much search as ransack, positively clawing the fabric off the sofa cushions with their bare hands. The arrival earlier that afternoon of FBI Unit Chief Erin Strauss and a number of other high-ranking federal officials had driven many into their last legal hour of overtime and beyond, and even with the wheels in motion to transfer the entire investigation into the hands of the Bureau there was a frenzied scrambling to do anything and everything one could. It seemed with the press in an uproar (a pixelated photograph of the agent who had recently been abducted in Georgia was to go into print that night), the whole city was being sucked into the storm. Parents put in worried calls to their twenty-something sons, urging them to stay indoors, while several of the local gay bars were besieged by picketing church groups whose members were under the impression that the murderer could be found inside. One man was shot, quite harmlessly in the shoulder, by an elderly neighbour who swore she had seen him murder a whole host of boys through her binoculars, and a young woman later identified as Kyle Horowitz' fiancée attempted suicide by hanging herself from the rafters of her loft. Their wedding date had been set to that day.

On the same plane that had carried Erin Strauss and her superiors into the fray, FBI technical analyst Penelope Garcia had demanded an extra seat for her computer equipment. She had lugged it all herself into a suitable room in the police station, and Agent Morgan, who had fetched her from the very landing strip, had not been allowed to help her. She had rarely been seen more unkempt, her face completely devoid of makeup and her hair still wet and lank from the five-minute shower she had reluctantly allowed herself before leaving Quantico. She wore track pants – neon pink, but nevertheless – and a shapeless, grey, FBI Academy-labelled t-shirt. Her shoes were uncharacteristically comfortable, and she sped through the station on light feet, finding the busy members of her team one by one and pausing for a whole of two minutes as she reached JJ, who had to stop what she was doing when she laid eyes on her in order to cry into her shoulder.

Maurice Jones sat in the devastation of his penthouse apartment, gazing wanly at the overturned chairs and pillaged bookcases, at the material excess of his life poured all over the hardwood floors. They had been in his attic, had been in the storm cellar out back that he didn't even have a key to, and they had left with only a promise that someone would be around tomorrow to help him clean up. Not even a trace of an apology had been offered.

The man whose house would not pass a similar search was deep in concentration over the live stream on his computer screen. He watched his prize sleep, watched him seek the only refuge he could find, and fought the oncoming exhaustion. It was barely eight o'clock and he was longing for his own sleep, was longing for the same dreamless darkness that he knew would come to him again tonight. The day's activities had left him worn, drained; too tired to reflect over the fact that he had seen his neighbour on the sidewalk a couple of hours earlier, simply peering through his window. Once he realised he'd been spotted he had simply waved and smiled and gone on his way, and the predator was yet to let himself consider how worried he should be.

He had spent a full hour updating himself on the progress of the police and FBI, combing through newspapers and obscure internet forums, and had been vaguely unsettled to learn that the authorities seemed to be focusing their efforts on people who had already come forward as witnesses. He could not help but once again admire the accuracy of Jason Gideon's profile, the true aim of his already famous instincts, but rather than let himself rejoice in the fact that he had not been summoned he decided to expect the worst; perhaps they were simply yet to reach his name on the list. He checked his answering machine, made sure there were no unwelcome missed calls, even paused at a window facing the street as though expecting to find a mess of squad cars and black SUVs cluttering the sidewalk. That was when he spotted David Malcolm. Returning his awkward wave and smile, he had paced in a rather numbed state back through the house, to the computer and the live feed that would show him the only thing that he currently seemed capable of concentrating on. Just a few minutes, a few minutes before he slept. No more.

Half an hour later, he was still sitting there as the evening grew thick and black outside his windows. Still his prize slept. Naked, bruised and bleeding, he lay curled on his side by the wall, occasionally overtaken by a convulsive shiver but otherwise still. Deathly still. Only the steady rise and fall of his ribs showed that he was even alive. The predator leaned ever closer to the screen, his thoughts a muted, confused tangle, and dared to imagine that he wasn't. That he was looking at a corpse, that their time together was already spent. That it was time to part with him, this most precious of all the boys he had ever taken for his own.

The thought froze him to the chair. His entire body submerged in ice-cold despair, lungs clamping shut. Releasing a sharp breath, he clicked away the stream and hurriedly proceeded to turn off the computer, pushed back forcefully from the desk once he had. Stared with something like fear at the black screen. Exhaustion was still heavy in his limbs, still fogging his thoughts, but the notion of sleep seemed suddenly inconceivable. Like he would never sleep again.

Tearing his gaze from the screen, he got to his feet and strode through the living room to the basement door. Halting here, he raked both hands back through his hair and counted his breaths, one, two, in, out. He could feel the presence of his prize below, like a heart pumping through the house. Beckoning him.

More out of habit than anything else, he went through the motions of postponing the next descent. No longer comfortable with the idea of going to sleep and wait for a new day, he turned instead to the dirty dishes on the kitchen counter. Dealt with them as slowly as he possibly could, before heading into his bedroom to retrieve an old army blanket from the linen closet. He took a first aid kit from under the bathroom sink and a fresh pair of sweatpants from the dryer, placed it all outside the basement door before heading back into the kitchen to make a pot of strong coffee. He put on some music, Tom Waits this time, just to scatter the silence, and sat down with a steaming cup. Spread the New York Times crossword out on the table and resolved to spend at least fifteen minutes with it, if only just to prove to himself that he could. Something was fraying inside of him, coming undone at the very edges, and he wasn't quite ready to acknowledge what it might be. Two days. Only two days had passed. He wouldn't be ready in quite some time.

_Efficacious. Thaumaturgy. Catherine of Aragon. _

He was barely aware of printing the words into the little squares, simply going on fumes while unable to disregard neither his thoughts nor his impatience. Just avoiding looking over his shoulder at the basement door was difficult enough; it was like _it_ stared at _him_, daring him to keep pretending it wasn't there. Like it spoke, taunting, in the sandpaper tones coming from the stereo._ "Come closer, don't be shy…"_

_Scrimshaw. Umlaut. Vacillate._

The pounding of his own heart was like the rhythmic call of the basement itself, of what was hidden there. He had to close his eyes, had to knot his free hand in his lap to try and get some rudimentary hold on his need. It flickered across the insides of his lids; the image of his sleeping prey curled like an infant in the womb. Still very much alive, still his and his alone. So much time left to enjoy.

"_God took the stars and he tossed them, can't tell the birds from the blossoms…"_

_Ulster. Haberdashery._

He glanced up at the clock on the wall. Nine minutes.

"_You'll never be free of me…don't say goodbye to me…describe the sky to me…"_

_Canker. Toreador._

…_You know they all say that. You're kidding yourself._

Sucking in his breath, the predator had to take a moment to master his thoughts. What was he doing? He could be with his prize. He could be down there, right now, with the doctor in his reach. As if on cue, the vivid memory of his body, his long white limbs, the soft heat of his insides, poured into his mind, upending whatever reasons he'd had for sitting himself down here in the first place.

"_And if the sky falls…mark my words, we'll catch mockingbirds…"_

The letters and squares swam below him, melted into an incomprehensible scramble that he could not for the life of him understand why he had chosen to spend his time with. Glancing up at the clock again, he hissed a curse under his breath. There was nothing for it. Eleven minutes was more than enough. Had he always been like this? How had he managed to stand himself?

"_Lay your head where my heart used to be…" _

The closet seemed smaller than ever. Claustrophobic, the walls and ceiling seeming to loom over him as if eager to eject him. He donned the clothes speedily, keenly aware that his heart was practically racing. Tugging the mask into place, he stepped out into the hall again, slammed the door shut behind him. He strode to the stereo and turned the music off, letting the stillness close around him with a promise of imminent release; unlocking and opening the basement door was a matter of seconds and, with the things he had placed on the floor bundled in his arms, he took the stairs down into the darkness with something like haste in his steps.

By the time he had descended, the doctor had dragged himself into sitting position. Knees pulled up to his chin and legs folded tightly, he had managed to cover himself as best he could. The predator paused below the stairs, and they inspected each other; the predator taking in the state of his prey's injuries, the feverish vigilance shining from his eyes, while the doctor took note of the items he was carrying, lingering with some confusion on the first aid kit. It couldn't have been in his precious profile that the other boys' wounds had been tended to, as any trace of such care would have been washed away when he cleaned them. Admittedly he had only done it twice, to stem the blood flow from wounds sustained too early in the process, and this was not the case with the doctor. Quickly scanning the burns and cuts, he established that nothing was even bleeding, that the burns showed no signs of infection, and judging by the state of the floor where he was sitting he had begun to heal on the inside, too. Others had succumbed to this, the only blood loss he didn't know how to halt, but it seemed the fates had once again decided to vote in his favour.

Without a word of greeting, he crossed to where his prey cowered and sank into a crouch, putting what he was carrying aside on the floor. The doctor showed no increase in discomfort at the sudden proximity, his folded body already still as a statue. Feeling wary umber eyes following his every movement, the predator flipped open the lid of the first aid kit and rummaged around for cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol. Placing them on the floor, he closed the lid and tossed the kit to the foot of the stairs. Slipped the roll of duct tape from his pocket. At the sight of it, the doctor blinked and swallowed but didn't move.

"Give me your hands," the predator told him, holding out his own.

"Why?" whispered his prize, brows furrowing softly. "I'm too weak to fight. You need to feed me if you want me to struggle."

Taken aback by the calm and reasoning tone, the predator peered into his face. Half-expected to see a commanding glare overtake that owlish apprehension. He could feel himself smiling, could feel the corners of his mouth curling softly upwards.

"Who says I want you to struggle?"

The doctor swallowed again. "Don't you?"

Shaking his head, the predator took his prey's unresisting hands and proceeded to wind the tape around his wrists.

"I already told you. It doesn't interest me whether or not you struggle. You'd be surprised how many of them didn't."

"I doubt it," came the murmured reply, and the predator leaned close to catch his eye again. Holding his fettered wrists in his hands, he rubbed warm thumbs over icy cold skin. Dark, hollow gaze avoiding him, the doctor turned his face towards the wall, drawing his knees even tighter to his chest. He didn't withdraw his hands. The predator looked down at the long, graceful things, brushed his lips briefly across bony white knuckles. A thin, fragile sound escaped his prize, and the predator could not help himself; edging closer, he took him in his arms, legs and all, and dragged the scent of blood and singed flesh and the scent of the doctor himself deeply, greedily into his lungs. Pressed against the unwilling body and forced the shaggy head into the crook of his shoulder; naked skin whispering against the stiff fabric of his black uniform; more papery groans and moans of pain as the fresh cuts and burns and bruises protested against the embrace. The doctor wedged his bound hands in between himself and his captor, but he had been right – he was too weak to struggle. Releasing a long sigh, the predator kissed the locks of hair. Moved his lips to a swan-like neck, and as he pressed against the ropy sinews he felt the doctor's pain and his own arousal melt into one single, bright burst. As though he felt it, too, the doctor cried out, his coiled body locked in a spasm as he tried to get away; the predator fought for control over both himself and his prey in a torturous moment of surrender. He could hear himself breathing too fast, could feel his heart drumming a delirious rhythm behind his ribs.

He had to withdraw if only just for the sake of his self-restraint, suddenly certain that if he lost it now he would never reclaim it. Destiny closed around him yet again, and he sat back on his haunches to see his shivering, beautiful prize as clearly as he ever had. He was panting, eyes low, hands sheltered between his chest and his folded legs. It wasn't fear trembling through him, but pain.

The predator took a steadying breath and picked up the cotton and alcohol, set to work with the wounds that he could reach without making his prey move. Cigarette burns on his shoulder and neck, gashes on his arm that might have scarred beautifully, more burns on his upper thigh. The predator had been thorough for only a first session, perhaps too thorough. As weakened as the doctor clearly was, he wouldn't heal well, and not nearly well enough to allow for another session tonight or tomorrow. It was the most common of the mistakes he had made with the first boys; it had taken him much too long to figure out how to keep them from expiring too soon. The first to last more than a week had been one of the prostitutes, a dark and difficult creature who had cursed him in a Slavic language he hadn't been able to place. Could it be that he had reverted to the over-excitement of those early days, when the rush had been too great to allow for any kind of lasting grasp? It would certainly make sense if he had. It would make sense with everything else that was strange and chaotic and different about this particular prize. This piece of art, this miracle, this…FBI agent. It would make perfect sense.

"I can do that myself," the doctor whispered, eyes now on the predator's hands. "If you just give me the swab, I don't need the bottle…"

He held out his own, bound hands. Several of his fingernails were broken.

Without bothering to answer him, the predator put the items in question aside in order to manoeuvre his captive away from the wall. He reached across his legs, put his other arm around his shoulders, and all the while the doctor kept talking; "You don't need to do this, I have training in this sort of thing, in managing flesh wounds and bullet holes…I can fix myself up in no time, you don't need to…"

"Sssh." Edging him across the floor, he tried to make him lie down on his side. He struggled for a moment, and when he yielded he made a point of putting his hands between his legs. The predator didn't know if it was endearing or irritating, but all the same he let him cling to his pride. It was a wonder he still could.

As gently as possible, he went over all the injuries he hadn't yet seen to. Took his time. The doctor lay rigid and trembling under his hands, his dark gaze disconnected and far away, too far for the predator to deduce what he was thinking. By all appearances, he had no plans of making another escape attempt, had no plans of trying anything whatsoever, but the predator had long ago acquired a habit of constant suspicion. Even when trapped as completely as this, most people could never quite part with the idea of freedom. He had come to believe it was a deep-seated, natural state. Even God's own garden had eventually revealed itself to be no more than a prison.

When he was finished, he took a fresh cotton swab and placed his other hand on the doctor's ankles. He pressed down, pinning his legs to the floor.

"I have no plans on hurting you right now," he told his prize quietly. "I'm just going to clean you up."

Breath quickening, the doctor raised his head off the floor. Stared wildly as the predator slipped the swab in between his thighs. A sharp gasp, then a thrashing, writhing motion like a snake caught by the neck.

"I know it's cold," muttered the predator. Seeming to force himself to lay still, the doctor tightened his hands over his genitals; the cotton swab brushed his fingers as the predator attempted to scour the worst of the crusted mess of dried blood and semen. He could feel the urge to run, to be anywhere else, fluttering along the doctor's every muscle, straining and screaming at his touch. Another convulsive shiver as he pushed the swab between his buttocks, but not the slightest sound of protest. He was chewing his lip and barely breathing, clearly doing his best to remain as quiet and docile as possible. As if he was more than aware how useless any other course of action would be to both him and his captor.

He finished, released the doctor's feet. Made sure his prey was still cooperating before he took his penknife from his pocket and cut the duct tape from his wrists.

"I'll leave this with you," he said, sitting back and picking up the bundled blanket he had placed on the floor. He took the sweatpants from its folds and showed them to the doctor. "I know it can get cold down here."

Squinting confusedly, the doctor licked his lips. Followed the bundle with his eyes as the predator put it back on the floor. He didn't say anything, and this alone had to mean he suspected the act of seeming kindness to be some version of a trap. The predator did not feel compelled to convince him otherwise, so he got to his feet and took a few steps back, the bottle of antiseptic and the soiled cotton swabs in his hands.

"You should sleep," he told the doctor when he had reached the stairs. The sharp brown gaze had been trained on him during his retreat, and he turned his back on it with the bitter weight of regret in his chest. He picked up the first aid kit, rearranged the load in his arms and started to climb the stairs, weariness like led in his joints. Sleep. He should sleep, too. Perhaps in the morning he would feel different, would be rid of this peculiar sense of dread or anxiety or whatever it was that had driven him down here in the first place…

"Wait."

Stopping dead in his tracks halfway up the steps, the predator listened below. A flutter of excitement, curiosity, would his prize amaze him yet again? Had he another plan in place after all?

Perhaps a little paranoid, he used his free hand to check his pockets. Everything was still there. He had to give in to a moment of prudence, weighed his options as he stood stock still halfway between the prize below and his empty bed above. Vanity.

He put the first aid kit down on the topmost step, then turned and headed back down. Made a point not to hurry, the gentle simmer of anticipation prickling at the back of his neck.

The doctor was sitting up. In one hand he held the sweatpants, in the other the chain that was shackled to his ankle.

"I don't know how to…put them on."

They regarded each other for a moment. The stretch of floor between them bore marks of the past days' play. Dark stains and smudges where the doctor had dragged himself away from the worktable. Allowing himself a sigh, the predator crossed to where he sat and fell into a crouch again. He took the pants, turned them over. Showed his captive the zipper than ran the length of one leg.

With a wordless murmur, his prize licked his lips again.

The need burning a relentless path through his guts and into his loins, the predator couldn't seem to get to his feet again. His eyes wandered, strayed down the doctor's marred and naked body as those long hands struggled to get a strong enough grip on the zipper. So weak. He must indeed have gone too far with the blades.

"Here," he said, his voice all too husky, and took the pants from him. Unzipped, he gave them back, but still he couldn't make himself get up. His body rebelled against him, and it was doing its best to convince his mind. The exhaustion he had felt now thinning to a general sluggishness, he reached out to fold a wayward tress of hair from his prey's face. He didn't shy away.

Holding the pants protectively in his lap, he said in a near-whisper, "So…how long till you kill me?"

Withdrawing his hand as if burned, the predator took a breath. Looked into deep dark eyes that met his without hesitation, his thoughts beginning to tilt and spin in a way he didn't recognize. The heat in his stomach turning lukewarm, then cold.

"In time," he replied just as quietly, "we will say goodbye. In time."

"When?" the doctor repeated, something desperate entering his voice. "And how? Will you make it quick? Or will you slice at me until there's no more blood in me to drain?"

It was reflexive, had to be – before he was even aware of doing it, he reached out and grabbed a fistful of the doctor's hair.

"Quiet," he heard his own voice hiss, fierce and far from human. Drawing a rasping wail from his prize, he pulled at the hair in his hand until the doctor arched into his grip, bending towards the floor. He forgot to cover himself, the sweatpants falling away and exposing him.

"Please," he breathed in between grunts of pain, "I'm sorry. Please. I lost my temper. Please…"

The predator looked down at the bared creature in his hand, the white arch of him impossibly graceful even in the grip of pain. Slender hands clawing vainly at the hand in his hair, feet sliding feebly across the concrete floor. The predator felt his need gather in strength once more, and this time he let it come, let it fill him to the brim; the walls of an endless tunnel blackening the edges of his vision, framing the flaring crystals of his ever-focused vision until all he saw was the prize, his prize, his own. He was utterly helpless before such beauty, and there was an ache inside him now that he didn't know if he'd felt before.

It was with the intoxication of destiny thickly tangled around his thoughts that he lunged over his prey, free hand trailing down his struggling form to feel the silken skin and the places where he had broken it. The doctor twisted and thrashed but could not fight as thoroughly as he wished lest he pull his scalp free from the skull, which left the predator with enough wielding room to close his fingers around the most forbidden part of him, the most beautiful part – the cry that escaped him at the touch was equally beautiful. One of his white hands darted down to grab the predator's wrist while, unexpectedly, the other shot out to clutch at the front of his shirt.

"Don't," he said sharply, imploringly, pupils shrunken with fear coming to rest on the masked face above. "Not again. No."

"Sssh," the predator whispered. Hearing his own breath coming quick and heavy, he reluctantly withdrew both hands in order to turn him on his stomach; he screamed, angrily, furiously, voicing a wrath that his body was too weak to utilize. It was all too easy ignoring his flailing hands, his kicking feet, all to easy sliding astride him and snatching both his wrists in only one hand. Once he had him subdued, the fight seemed to go out of him altogether, and the wheezing breaths he pulled into his lungs mingled with bursts of dry sobs.

A concentrated effort of willpower alone allowed the predator to pause. With his prey's hands in an easy grasp at the small of his back, he rested his weight on top of him, pushing his nose into the hair at the nape of his neck. Made a sound of contentment deep in his throat.

In the sudden stillness, he became aware of that sadness again, aching somewhere amidst distant background static. The weight of it bittersweet and burning in his heart. He closed his eyes. Felt the matted softness of his prize's hair against his face, the fever heat of his skin. Slid his hand up a white and naked flank, over the ridge of a narrow hip and the smooth mound of a firm buttock. He wanted him. He would take him. It was how it had always been.

Ears full of his prey's fear, he edged the tips of his finger into the fleshy crevice between his buttocks, steadied himself over the frozen body as it fought against the imminent violation. For reasons he could not decipher, he hesitated. Felt the swollen ring of muscles under his touch. Felt his own erection straining, screaming for release, his need spreading its unrelenting high like mist through his thoughts. He wanted, he needed…he had his whole world right here, waiting beneath him, completely in his control. Perfection trapped beneath himself and unyielding concrete. His for the taking. His and his alone.

Yet he hesitated. The urge to own, to possess, burning and searing and boiling in every nook and cranny of his being, and he hesitated. A strange ache he couldn't identify casting a dull shadow over it all.

He forced himself to drink in the warm mess of life underneath. Still resisting, still fighting, still refusing him with every ounce of strength he could muster.

Letting out a breath he hadn't even been aware of holding, the predator withdrew his searching hand. It stung inside him as he sat up astride his prize, still maintaining the grip on his wrists with his other hand.

They both remained still for several long seconds. The doctor purposefully slowed his breaths, meek as a kitten now that nothing was being done to him, while the predator attempted to find beginning and end to this new confusion slowly growing and forming in pace with the unfamiliar sadness.

It had to be more than just the usual unravelling at the end of a process. This had to be more. He did not know this. This was not something he had trained himself to handle. And he had been feeling it all day. Perhaps longer. He had just been perfectly capable of ignoring it until now.

Car keys dangling from his neighbor's hands. The dark, cold cellar empty around him before his process was even in motion, his alarm clock in pieces on the floor. An FBI agent in his basement.

He looked down at the naked back below. The dry creek bed of a long and graceful spine, ridges of ribs snaking around a narrow chest. White as milk. As a corpse.

He had to get out of here. Anywhere but here was where he needed to be right now; the realization was as absolute as it was abrupt. If he could sleep, if he could find that darkness again, plummet into nothingness and remerge as some version of himself tomorrow.

Gathering some momentum, he released his prey's wrists and shot to his feet in the same fluid movement, propelled himself backwards towards the stairs. In the moments before he turned his back, he saw his prize curl onto his side and fix shrewd doe eyes on his retreating captor. As though he knew. As though he could see right through him.

As though he had predicted this in that star chart he called a profile.

* * *

That night, Reid began to hallucinate.

He didn't think it was the malnutrition – he had been drinking water from the tap, and as far as he could tell he hadn't been down here more than a couple of days. While the isolation and fear alone was enough to cause a psychosis, he was fairly certain this wasn't the case, either. He was still thinking straight, still reasoning like a sane person. He knew the difference, after all. Thought he would at least catch some kind of warning sign if he was about to lose his mind.

The abuse had been severe, and while the blood loss was substantial it wasn't bad enough to induce delirium. Perhaps he had a fever? The basement would be riddled with bacteria by now, and he had been sitting in it for days.

He had been unable to put on the pants the UnSub had brought him. The zipper had been too much for his weakened hands. He thought he might have a sprained wrist, as well, which hadn't helped the endeavour. Instead he had wrapped the blanket around himself as best he could, and he now sat in his corner with his back to the wall, staring at the ghost crouching in the corner directly across from him.

Some semblance of sleep had found him after the UnSub had left, and when he awoke to the same glaring overhead light – it hadn't been turned off once since that first period of pitch darkness – the ghost had been there, white as a winter sky and shackled to the table by a chain just like his own.

At first, his face had been Timothy Berg's. His injuries had corresponded to those catalogued by the coroner. Cardiac arrest had been the COD, but that in turn had been caused by the UnSub's torture and the six days without food he had lasted before his body gave in.

Once again, his eidetic memory had turned against him. A perfect recreation of the crime scene photographs Reid had studied, the ghost had stared at him through that colourless film of death, his previously blue eyes like dishwater. Only one had been fully visible, as the other was swollen nearly shut and surrounded by purplish bruising. His face had in life been delicate, almost feminine, but in expressionless death it looked like a lump of clay someone had half-heartedly tried to mold into a set of human features.

Reid had not been frightened by the sight. He knew it wasn't real. It was like in dreams, when your mind simply accepts what's there without attempting to analyze it. He knew that, had he not been injured or locked in a basement or scared out of his wits, he would not have seen it.

The hallucination had shifted, and soon he saw all of the boys, all ten of them cowering in the corner as they had been when the UnSub was finished with them. He had begun to drift off again, too weak to process the sight before him, and through half-closed lids he looked upon Kyle Horowitz, Kevin Silvestri, Adam Morrison. The John Doe who had been found without his face seemed to stare at him with what was left of his eyes, the dark hole of his toothless mouth open in what might have been a plea. Other boys, strangers, long limbs and fine-boned faces Reid didn't recognize. Four of them, or was it five? Six? Another ten?

Hours must have passed, and the hallucinations didn't go. He thought he might have slept for a while, he wasn't sure, and suddenly Tobias was there, hulking in the corner with the chain around his ankle. Straw blond hair mussed, shaggy beard caked with blood, he was as naked as Reid and covered in gaping wounds. Clear blue eyes met his, wide and fearful rather than dead and empty like the others', and he whispered with the voice of Gideon, _He cannot break us. You see inside his mind. He cannot break us._

And then Morgan was there, standing over him with his arms across his broad chest. _Where's your head, kid?_

"I don't know," Reid answered him, forcing his eyes to stay open, willing Morgan to stay with him. "I don't know. Please don't go. Don't go."

But he was gone, and Reid was out again, floating on a deep and bottomless darkness. When he found himself looking at his mother, crawled into a ball in the corner like the dead boys, he hoped he was dreaming. Please let it be a dream. Just a nightmare. Just a nightmare…

And the darkness took him again, mercifully, blotting out the sound of her keening, helpless pleas. How long he was gone he couldn't say, but Raphael was there when he awoke. A tall shadow with burning eyes, or was it the UnSub? Was he still dreaming?

_Do you know what this is? It's God's will._

_You know why I chose you. _

Fish hearts and livers, the stink of it as strong as it had been that night. Maybe it would keep away the devil, maybe Tobias could keep him safe…

If only Morgan could have stayed, maybe the devil would never come back. Maybe…

Once again he was drifting, nothing more than a frequency on the strings of the atmosphere. Voices echoing on the dead air, they wouldn't stop, his mother begging for his mercy in chorus with the dead boys' screams. The archangel preaching with the certainty of the ages, preaching his end as he knew it was coming.

They would have found him by now. Gideon, Morgan, Hotch. They would have found him if they could.

Even in the thickening oblivion, he felt his heart breaking. He didn't want this for them. He wanted to spare them of this. He didn't want them to have to respond to the call when some poor random passerby found him, didn't want them to have to stand over his broken corpse and study the scene, didn't want them to have to write his murder into the profile.

While there was still a breath left in him to keep them from that pain, he had to fight. He knew this. As the screams gathered and became a choir of angels and demons and dead souls in his head, he held on to this knowledge. A last, golden straw as strong as any steel shackle.

_In time we will say goodbye._

_In time._

* * *

The third day dawned crisp and clear, the bright weather like a mockery. Dr. Spencer Reid's pixelated photograph, the same one used in the articles that had been published in Georgia some months ago, was splashed across the front pages of the newspapers. Agent Jennifer Jareau could be found staring at it in the squad room at the police station, where a heap of said papers lay stacked on one of the tables. Beside her, Jason Gideon was staring just as intently at the angled whiteboards that displayed the details of the case in a montage of bloody murder. Pale morning light lay shivering throughout the room.

At a coffee shop near the station, Lydia Finnerty, known as Liddy to her friends and family, met her father for a hasty breakfast. What with the Stalker investigation she hadn't seen him in over a week, and it was the conversation – or fight, as it were – with her boyfriend yesterday that had prompted her to coax him into a quick meal of pancakes and black coffee before she had to go to work.

One of the more experienced local detectives, Finnerty was overworked and cranky, and seeing his daughter turned out to be just what he needed. Having lost his wife in childbirth, he had always been very close with her, and they shared a habit of spilling their innermost thoughts to each other at regular intervals. Finnerty's head was full of dead young men and faceless monsters – for once Liddy did not complain about the fact that David was yet to make an honest woman out of her – and it was on the topic of the Stalker case that she relayed her would-be fiancé's peculiar fascination with his neighbor. At the time Finnerty barely registered it, but it was during a slow hour that afternoon when, while tending to some paperwork at his computer, his eyes landed on a framed photo of his daughter that David had taken. Smiling, carefree, thoroughly alive. David had a knack for making her that way, Finnerty knew. It had been a Fourth of July picnic.

Not for the first or the last time, he sent a grateful prayer to the Blessed Virgin that he had no sons, and without really thinking he entered the name of his daughter's boyfriend's neighbor into the search engine.

* * *

The third night fell as black and secret as the last. The city showed its belly, rotating as incessantly as the earth itself into the darkness and all that it concealed. While there were certain visible signs that a serial killer was at large, nothing could ever really halt the machinery of nocturnal urban life. Bombs falling from the sky had been known to go unnoticed by certain kinds of back-alley entrepreneurs.

Not a single gay bar had closed, and a subtle pride could be discerned among the patrons who now mingled around tables and dance floors. Some cast the occasional glance over their shoulders at the occasional dubious-looking man, but there were no incidents. No allegations, no violence. If anything it was a remarkably quiet night, with no man left to walk home alone through the streets if it could be helped.

The evening grew late and starry. A bright and sunny day transformed into a moonlit night. Great and Little Bear, Orion and Cassiopeia watching indifferently from above.

A warrant to search the home of Michael Jones would be signed by a judge shortly after two in the morning. He would by then have remained unreachable since Detective Finnerty had made Agent Hotchner aware of his possible relevance as a suspect.

More than three hours were yet to pass before that happened. Many things could go wrong in three hours.

Officer Suzy Nuñez would go off her shift in thirty minutes. If she was very lucky, she might get six hours of sleep in before it was time to go back to the station, but three would be a luxury in its own right. The night before had been without sleep altogether, since she had put in several hours of overtime to finish up reports. Reports were an even bigger deal than usual right now, with the access they needed to turn the city inside out resting on the paperwork – not to mention the fact that the feds had taken over the bulk of the administrative tasks, and she had never seen anything quite so ruthlessly efficient in her life. The profiler people had been scary enough when they arrived, but their bosses were definitely in a league of their own.

She hadn't actually met the guy who they said had been snatched. The identity of the abducted agent hadn't reached the lower rungs of the chain of command, so she would never know for certain unless the information became public, something she strongly doubted these politicians on steroids would ever let happen. But the guys who had been to the initial briefings had told her the agent in question was nowhere to be seen now, and damn them if he wasn't just the killer's type. In all fairness there were feds all over the place now, and it would only be reasonable to assume that some had been sent back to Washington or the nearest field office or wherever the hell it was they spent their time. Scary people. Though she wouldn't mind being briefed, so to speak, by that big fellow with the tattoos.

It was with a half-formed idea of what she might do to Agent Morgan on, say, a desert island spinning gently through her thoughts that she slipped outside through a disused emergency exit to have one last cigarette before shift change. She was supposed to have quit on the first of January like every other year, but like every other year it had been postponed due to unexpected circumstances – work, this time. The Stalker investigation hadn't exactly worked any miracles on her health, either.

The exit she used led onto a disconnected fire escape that, with no ladder and an eight-foot drop to the ground, had been left where it was rather than torn out when the exit itself was taken out of commission. It was supposed to be locked and preferably boarded up, but for reasons unknown it still opened from the inside, making it ideal for sneaking a smoke if you didn't mind the trek through the corridors to get there.

Gazing blearily into the brick wall of the building across the alleyway, Suzy tried to fully enjoy her cigarette without thinking of how much sleep she might or might not get tonight. It proved to be a challenge, and she smoked too fast, too greedily – three minutes later she turned on the small space to head back inside.

She'd forgotten to put the wedge in the door.

Staring at the smooth steel where a handle would have been, she suppressed the urge to shout out loud and instead hissed a curse under her breath. Sinking into a squat, she picked up the piece of wood that usually sat on top of the railing just outside the door; it must have fallen off. If she hadn't been so exhausted she would have noticed that it was on the floor. Chest tightening with frustration at the thought of having to call someone to get back inside, she cursed again and ran her fingers along the bottom of the door. Vainly, of course, since it didn't even open from the outside, there was no damn doorknob –

Her fingers caught on something. A wire. A thin steel wire, sticking out from under the bottom edge of the door. Frowning, Suzy tugged at it and felt a vibration going up the wire into her hand. What the hell?

Taking a breath, she used both hands to pull on it and was pushed on her ass by the door as it opened a couple of inches. Letting go of the wire in surprise she watched it fall shut with a creak and a bang.

What the _hell?_

She stood up and steadied herself on the rusted railing. At her feet, the hole where a ladder had once been was covered with a steel plate, and there were no windows at all in the wall below the fire escape – there was simply no way up here. Down, yes, you could easily jump if you had the guts and agility, but not up. Had one of the few other smokers who used the place decided they were sick of using the wedge? No cop would be that stupid. Someone in maintenance, maybe?

Something wasn't right about this. It must have been a fussy business, securing the wire so that it wasn't visible from the inside. How long had it been there? Her heart sped up when it occurred to her that the Stalker could have used it to get in. All he'd have needed was a ladder, and with that van he was supposed to be driving…

Spinning on the spot, she looked down into the dusky alley. Lit by still-intact lamps, it carved its way between two wings of the police station, and a set of gates down one end led to an enclosed parking lot for visitors. The other end was walled up, barb wire and all, with the street on the other side. She could hear the soft murmur of life coming from there, voices and footsteps and the odd, distant laugh.

The gates to the parking lot weren't locked, but she was still surprised to see an unmistakably shaped bundle lying a few feet inside them. She felt herself grimacing; they must have been pretty out of it not to have noticed that they were lying down to sleep it off behind a police station. She could see a pale hand curled on the tarmac, sticking out the folds of what looked like an old military blanket, and the top of a dark-haired head. She couldn't see any newspapers or cardboard, which in itself was odd since it wasn't a warm night.

"Hey!" she called, her voice bouncing eerily down the alley. "You can't sleep there."

Hesitating a second or two, she had time to confirm that the bum had, unsurprisingly, not heard her. Then she allowed herself another hissed curse, climbed over the railing and lowered herself as close to the ground as possible before dropping steadily onto the asphalt.

"Hey," she repeated as she started down the alley. Still no reaction, still the heap on the ground was completely motionless. A little too motionless, perhaps.

"Come on." Stopping a few feet short of the homeless person, Suzy put a habitual hand on her belt. "Wake up, buddy. You can't sleep here."

Nothing. The lamp on the wall above her flickered briefly, like an omen, and she shivered as unease trickled ice down her spine.

"Hello? Wake up."

This close she could glimpse a white brow beneath the tangled head of hair. The length of the hair itself along with the twig-thin wrist made her think she was looking at a woman, which didn't ease her mind at all. If someone had managed to kill their girlfriend since last she had sneaked a smoke on the fire escape, she couldn't help but wonder why they would dump her here of all places.

Ice now tumbling into her gut, she took a breath and stepped closer. Slanted a sideways glance to the parking lot as a car slowly maneuvered its way into the street.

Crouching down beside the shrouded form, she tried to deduce whether there were any perceptible breath movements beneath the blanket. Either the woman was breathing very shallowly, or something was decidedly wrong. Sending a silent prayer to the Blessed Virgin that the case was the former, she slipped her fingers onto the exposed wrist to determine if there was a pulse. Ice cold, it felt like paper under her touch. Her hand shifted the blanket down the woman's arm, exposing more white skin and –

"Jesus!"

The wounds were extremely nasty, like someone had taken a dull bread knife to her, and Suzy quickly withdrew her hand. The suspended second that passed before she reclaimed enough sense to open the blanket stretched across a kind of vacuum, and for a fraction of it she wanted nothing more than to get up and run. She would remember that urge, that instant of cowardice, for the rest of her life.

"Hey, lady!" she said loudly, tugging at the blanket to reveal a long, bloodied arm that was a little too muscular and a chest that did not belong to any lady. Heart racing, nausea rearing up her throat, Suzy uttered a wordless, reluctant moan as her eyes skated over the burns and cuts and bruises – he wasn't alive, he couldn't possibly be alive. She folded the blanket away from an unfamiliar face, from closed eyes and more bruises and cracked, slightly parted lips. He didn't look a day over eighteen.

It took her only seconds to figure out who he must be, and she was on her feet, stumbling back the way she'd come as she groped at her shoulder for her radio.

Her shift would be over in twenty minutes.


	6. Chapter 6

**6**

He had been waiting for the bus.

It was a habit he had picked up after the first boy, and one he had stuck to for the simple reason that it was quite genius. With the police station so centrally located, there was a square right outside it, and smack in the middle of that square was a bus transit for regional travel. It was always teeming with people, even in the middle of the night, and in their midst the predator was as invisible as he could ever wish to be. He made a point of only going once a day, at a certain time, and of always actually getting on the bus; it gave him a window of ten minutes or more during which he could survey the main entrance of the station house. The subterranean garage had its exit right beside it, and he would take note of the cars that passed in and out as well as the people. Plainclothes detectives in particular caught his interest, and he quickly learned to spot the ones who were searching for him. The newspapers provided him with their names.

Hours after he had returned the sixth boy he had been standing there as usual, during the morning rush when the investigators were at their most diligent. The commuters around him had no idea another boy had been murdered, and just like them he was oblivious to the fact that the FBI were sending a group of behavioural analysts to assist the police in finding him. He would much later learn that they had been called as soon as the sixth one was found and that it had taken them less than two hours to be on location after the call.

The convoy came from the northeast; led by a single squad car it held three black SUVs and a silver Chevrolet he knew belonged to a Detective John Finnerty. While the Chevy had slipped down into the garage the four other vehicles had pulled into the small parking lot in front of the station entrance, and along with a man the predator knew to be captain of the homicide unit they emerged one by one. Later he would memorize their names, too – Aaron Hotchner and his team of gun-toting librarians. Hotchner himself stepped out with the captain, and he had government written all over his sharply official self; Emily Prentiss, striking and serious with the naturally confident posture of old money; Jennifer Jareau, whose sweet good looks must be helpful in her job as a professional people person; Derek Morgan, physically intimidating, fiercely intelligent and in possession of a great reserve of empathy that was sure to have served his work well; and Jason Gideon, reminiscent of a well-loved college professor with a eyes like a bird of prey, an ageing eagle overseeing his territory.

And there he was. The predator had sidled a little closer, peering under a soft frown across the street at the unlikely creature who came around one of the cars to unload a bag from the trunk. While he had at once discerned what type of investigators he must be looking at, he could not for the life of him believe that this – boy – was one of them. As he watched him hook the bag onto a bony shoulder where a battered old satchel already hung, he realized that he was most likely older than the teenager he appeared to be from this distance, and wasn't that a gun at his hip? One of them, for certain. A fed.

It wouldn't begin to dawn on him until the next morning that he wanted him. He had been sitting on a park bench across from the dormitories, his eye on a young man in the grass, when he realized that he was thinking about him again. His mind had been swivelling back to him repeatedly, usually under the pretence of acquiring at least a cursory idea of what level of talent was out there searching for him. Naturally he had read up on the so-called BAU, and in doing so had inevitably come across the official information about this particular field team. Jason Gideon was the most famous of them, with a long and intriguing career dating back to the birth of profiling itself. The local authorities already looking for him were in no way incompetent, but the profile they had so far been working with – put together by police a couple of years ago – had been completely off the mark.

Dr. Spencer Reid had initially been no more than a fantasy. Every time he mused about having him in the basement he had smiled at his own uncharacteristic flights of fancy. But soon it had become all too obvious that he had to do something about it. Soon it had become all too obvious that he was doomed.

Now, as he sat once more by his computer and the live feed, he felt as if an eternity had passed since then. Gazing unwaveringly at the image of his prize, the predator tried to relate to those days, before he had embarked on this journey. Now, looking back, he couldn't comprehend how he had found the courage to go through with it. Still he could feel the presence of whatever forces had guided him, the destiny that had been so prevalent from the moment he had decided to take him. And for the first time, he was aware of a certain bitterness towards it, a certain irrational indignation. If it hadn't been for all those pieces falling into place as if by magic, he would never have found himself in this situation. Would never have been confronted with parts of himself he didn't know and couldn't understand.

Wasn't love a type of madness, anyway? If so, he had never really been in control at all. It had been taken from him as soon as he caught sight of the prize. The irony of it was murderous. The control he had spent a lifetime gaining, the one thing that had always kept him those precious steps ahead of the authorities, had no longer been in his grasp when he let a member of said authorities get under his skin. Nothing ever got under his skin. Ever.

He had to close his eyes, had to shut out the glowing screen, to try and retrace whatever workings of his mind had led him to the outrageous conclusion that it had to be done. On that park bench, with the young man in the grass he couldn't even recall the eyes or skin or hair of now. Why had he let the initial recognition of a simple attraction to this person take over so completely? Yes, he wanted him. Yes, taking him was out of the question, a thought not even distantly worth entertaining. So why had he lost his perspective? Where had he made that u-turn?

Opening his eyes, he drank in the grainy image of his prize. Forced it into his retinas like it was nothing but a mirage he might never recreate the circumstances for. A stolen moment.

He had taken him. He had made him his own. He had tasted him, possessed him, and had known the kind of bliss he had only in dreams imagined would ever come his way. The kind of bliss he sometimes discerned the vague contours of in that final furious climax before he parted ways with a boy. And nothing made sense anymore. Least of all whatever bizarre reasoning had led him here in the first place.

Hindsight. Not even that. Nothing could ever make him regret the doctor. That much, at least, he knew.

He was calm. Serene, even. He wasn't sure why, but there it was. He had slept a little over twelve hours, twice as many as he usually allowed himself. As predicted, the night had been a long stretch of dreamless darkness, and when he woke up in the early afternoon it had been to the bright and unrelenting clarity that had held him in its grip since the beginning of the process.

But more of him had fallen away during the night. He knew it before he opened his eyes. The sensation of becoming dislodged from himself had been stronger, more defined. He'd gazed into the morning light spilling through the blinds and felt as if he'd woken up in a different country. Even the light was strange. Unfamiliar. Looking around his bedroom, he'd felt utterly adrift.

He had gone through his morning routine on autopilot, showering and dressing and walking the dog before a breakfast of black coffee and scrambled eggs. As if the need was all that kept him upright. All those reasons to maintain his façade of normality were far, far away, all but evaporated, and left only the call of the basement. Only the descent. He didn't even phone in to inform the office that he would be out of reach before unplugging the phone. They had already left messages for him; he deleted them without a second thought.

Packing had taken him the rest of the afternoon. It kept his mind off the basement just enough to let him focus on the task at hand, which was fortunate since it was quite a task – gathering the necessities of his life in as few suitcases as possible. It was clothes, it was tools, it was records and CDs and his expensive customized sound system. His guitar and the posters and paintings he'd grown fond of having on his walls. The documentation of his company, which would follow him wherever he went since dismantling it would only draw unwanted attention. It had survived the move five years ago and would survive now. Furniture and other bulky items would have to be left behind – like last time, he'd arrange for it to be brought when he'd laid a safe distance between himself and the city.

It was dinner time when he was beginning to feel finished. Grouped in the living room, his packed-up existence did not take up much space at all. He didn't know whether it was sad or admirable that it would so easily fit into the trunk of his car. A single bag stood apart from the rest, holding what would sustain him through the rest of the time he'd remain here. He sat on the couch with day-old take-out and tried not to let the sudden stillness seep into his thoughts. The sight of the suitcases and duffel bags was a melancholy one, a perfect companion to the disconnected state he'd been in since waking. There it was, ready to go. Was he ready?

The only thing holding him here was beneath his feet, getting weaker all the time. He would have one or two more days with him, three if he could manage it. Then…

The noodles tasted abruptly like yarn in his mouth. He held his breath; forced himself to swallow, before putting the box on the floor and tipping the remaining contents of his water bottle down his throat. His hunger dwindled rapidly, and he didn't know why he'd felt compelled to eat at all. Averting his eyes from the suitcases, he got to his feet and paced quickly to his study, where the desk chair and desk with the computer screen, mouse and keyboard stood alone in a clutter of milk crates full of wires and CDs and flash drives. The hard drive in its thin plastic shell, not long for this world now, looked particularly vulnerable where it rose out of the mess.

The need was burning. He was used to it by now, yet it hadn't gotten any easier to suppress. Like a twitching, angry itch in the deepest point of his loins. It was accompanied by the unfamiliar ache in the region of his heart, which had still been with him when he woke up.

He thought he knew what it was, now. Not that knowing helped in ridding him of it. It was as steady and as fundamental as the need itself.

Last night, after leaving the basement, he had taken the dog and gone for a long run, which was a luxury he only indulged in when he was living his other life. Stubbornly, he'd believed it would be the most effective in shaking loose whatever it was that had driven him from the presence of his prize unsatisfied, and his feet had carried him up to the woods and the track where he had left one of the other boys several weeks before. As his thoughts slowly scattered, clearing the field for a thorough analysis of the strange weight in his chest, he had paused at the site in question to jog on the spot while the dog went to sniff and poke at the small cluster of candles and pictures and wilted flowers on the ground. A large sign around which the other things seemed gathered drew his eye, bearing a child's awkward scrawl: _WE MISS YOU DADDY. _

And suddenly the name had come to him, ringing through his slowly clearing head like spring rain. Michael.

His own name.

And he had to run again, had to flee, to put the little altar and its offerings behind him. Put the name behind him.

He never kept the names. Didn't carry them with him. He knew them, of course – they were imperative to his preparation process. But he didn't keep them. He kept nothing from them. In that sense, he knew he differed from the various life forms that might see themselves as kindred spirits to him. They would keep a lock of hair or a piece of jewellery, even parts of the body itself, but not this predator. He had no need to relive them, didn't want to relive them – once he had exhausted what pleasures they could give him, he always felt more than ready to part with them permanently. The memories were more than enough.

The pounding of his feet against the ground, gravel crunching crisply underfoot. The pounding of blood in his head. Even now, far from the house, the basement beckoned him. Drumming its rhythmic call across the night. He could see him, even with his eyes wide open and trained on the path ahead. If he hadn't been running, hadn't been rationing his breaths already, it would have caught in his throat. The feel of him still so fresh, now somehow heightened by the bittersweet injection of sadness.

Through it all he had found, quite startlingly, that he didn't think he'd feel all that ready when it was time to part with the doctor.

Back at the house, he'd showered cold and bathed the dog. Crawled under cool sheets confident that sleep would come in an instant. It did.

It was just before it wrapped around him, lowering him into a blissful balm of nothing, that insight had struck. He was mourning. Grieving for something that was yet to happen.

The day had to come when he held the doctor in his arms and he was cold, unmoving. His eyes sightless and covered in a colorless film. Marble flesh no longer white but grey, almost blue, with the air long leaked from the blood that had once pumped through his veins. The day had to come.

And it was unbearable.

As he sank down into his desk chair the following afternoon and turned on his computer, there was a knife's edge of pain carving through the ache in his heart. He had recalled the first time he had seen him, coming out of that car and with his feline stride embarking on the mission that would lead him to the one he hunted. The tables turning, and turning still. He could feel the bridge of power through the floor, and it was so clear to him, now, that it could be travelled both ways.

His prize was thinking. The predator could see it as though he was down there himself. Gaze fixed and still, his lips moved vaguely but steadily below a soft frown. Forming not quite words, it seemed to be a physical manifestation of whatever was going on in his head, the rapid traffic of thought too heavy to stay purely internal. Physically weakened, he knew to stay still and waste as little strength as he could, and the unmarred capability of intellectual reasoning could be read in the small sighs he allowed himself as he reached a pause in the discussion he was having with himself. He was sitting with his back against the wall and the blanket wrapped about his shoulders, and while it was chilly in the basement it wasn't so cold that he needed to cover himself completely. His white stick legs could be seen, his feet resting on the concrete floor, and only a corner of the blanket lay across his midriff and crotch. He must have slept as soundly as the predator, for he seemed as alert as ever. Ready for anything.

It was time to descend.

He took the dog in from the yard and went into the closet to get dressed, and he had no choice but to let the sadness wind through his need unhindered as he unlocked the basement door and started down the steps. It slowed his breaths, sort of thickened them, and it exploded in curious balance to his joy at the sight of the doctor. Abrupt, sweet warmth like coming home, like finding something he thought he'd lost forever. He didn't recognize the feeling at all.

Looking up into his captor's eyes as he paced into the room, that complex fear instantly laid its subtle sheen across his features.

"It's been hours," he said quietly without waiting to be spoken to, and the sound of his voice intensified everything that was whirling through the predator. Confusion found him, not unlike that which had driven him from the basement last night. Like then he was convinced that this wasn't just unravelling; this wasn't just a loss of identity in the face of ending his process for the last time. This was something else altogether. Something stronger. And it was so new and alien, so unforeseen that he had absolutely no clue how to go about processing it. He was at its mercy.

A long white hand was hovering by his collarbone, gracefully angled as if chiselled expertly from flawless marble. They spoke a language of their own, his hands. Like he was constantly playing some phantom instrument. The predator had to stop for a moment, just to freeze that image in his mind. He would keep it with him. Carry it.

"I hope you slept," he said and crossed to where the doctor sat. Dropped into a crouch at a distance of little over two feet, eyes peeled for the slow stillness of burgeoning panic. The raised hand curling into a loose fist as if protecting something precious.

"Sure," he breathed, fever-bright eyes locked on the predator's. "Like…a baby."

The predator studied his face. Etched every angle, every curve of bone under white skin, every beautiful flaw into his memory. Felt it was imperative he never forget. Never let it merge into the blur of the other boys' faces, many of which had become interchangeable over the years.

But it never would, would it?

The doctor spoke again. "I think I have a more accurate profile."

The predator was taken aback. He wondered if it was his weakened state that let him talk so freely – if he simply hadn't the strength to be afraid – or if this was another layer of his rambling intellect unfolding.

"I'm all ears," he replied smoothly, eager to find out, and the doctor swallowed quickly and dragged the blanket over his torso, before tucking his long legs up to his chin and covering them as well. Watching the pale flesh vanish under coarse green wool, the predator reluctantly realized he'd been waiting to shield himself until he'd managed to distract his captor. He knew the act of self-protection would only draw his attention, perhaps even provoke him.

Gently, his already tumbled thoughts began to spin. He was unprepared for this. Games and manipulation, while expected from this particular prize, were very rare at this stage in the process. He had not expected them even from the doctor. Not now. Not this close to the finish line.

"Your whole existence is centred around…control," his prize began, still looking into his eyes. His voice was hoarse and weak, but steady. "The problem with our profile was that we misinterpreted this. We assumed that it was the whole point of your crimes. Sexual violence is usually about the violence rather than the sex, and…and paired with the meticulous execution…it seemed to point to a lack of control in your own emotional life that…that compelled you to repeatedly commit this type of act. We were wrong."

He took a breath, licked his lips. The predator could feel his heartbeats chasing each other through his chest.

"I don't think there's a pathology at all with you," the doctor whispered, shaking his head with something like wonder. "You're a psychopath, yes, but that has nothing to do with the nature of your crimes. They're a product of…something else. A disturbed sexuality that probably took shape in your early teens, when…self-control is virtually impossible. It wasn't abuse at the hands of others that made you what you are, but the abuse you discovered you could put others through – the profound sexual satisfaction it gave you was something you could acknowledge and explore _because _you're a psychopath.

"You would've started out as a garden variety sadist, nothing special…your victims were willing, at first. I bet the first boy you ever tortured was bribed or…otherwise coerced into keeping quiet. And he wasn't planned. The idea probably came to you relatively abruptly, and then…you just kept going. Kept perfecting your methods like…like a craftsman. An artist. This is…a hobby. A passion, but not a compulsion. The fact that you moved on to low-risk victims isn't due to an increase in confidence like we thought, but…but something you were planning to do all along. The prostitutes were just…rudimentary. A temporary solution."

As he spoke, his voice grew stronger. Even though it broke every few breaths he ploughed confidently on, the certainty of his words putting a gleam in his eyes.

"Your need for control has indeed permeated your whole life, your very existence. But there are…so many more levels to it than we ever thought to consider. There's the discipline, the self-control you had to master to the point of perfection in order to…to do what you love. It came about as a result of your crimes, not the other way around. And then…there's the control you exercise over your victims, which is just a facet of what you put them through. Control and power, while two sides of the same coin, are separate needs for you. We should…should have seen it. The bruising on only one ankle, the…water in their stomachs. We thought the beatings were to subdue them, to keep them scared, but they were all about the pain. The marks they'd leave."

The soft frown deepened, sharpened around his brown stare. "That's it, isn't it? The marks you leave. The work. You enjoy it so much, you…take such pride in it that you had to start showing it to someone, anyone. It's got nothing to do with narcissism. It's not to taunt the police or to cause the families more pain; you couldn't…care less about…collateral damage. You just need to…leave your mark. That's why you give them back. Why you give the bodies back."

It was draining him, this little speech. The predator could feel a mirror effect on himself, the act of listening taking its own toll.

"The only thing I can't figure out," the doctor said faintly, and his tone had a finality to it, "is why…you took…me."

In the silence after he was finished, the sound of his thready breaths drowned under the tumult of blood crashing through the predator's head. Like a storm-tossed, furious ocean.

It seemed that the fates had intervened yet again. What else could put the same thoughts, the same questions, into both their heads? He imagined they were here with them, the forces that had conducted the dance of coincidence that had allowed him to achieve this impossible scheme. They were lurking in the corners of the basement, lurking behind his prize's owlish stare. The predator had about as much control as a feather caught on a gust of wind. Wherever he was intended to go, he would go. Might as well let go of the cliff's edge altogether. Feel the wind in his hair before he hit the ground.

He heard his own voice through the wrath of the tempest. Heard the old accent of his home town put its coarse drawl into the vowels –

"I…I couldn't tell you. I don't know."

– and something came loose inside him. Fell away.

He reached out. Ignored the little start as his hand approached; much too still, the doctor let it come to rest on his cheek. Let the thumb rub across the shallow valley under his bottom lip. He kept his eyes on the predator, unhesitating and strangely fearless.

"That's – that's what I thought," he stammered. "It doesn't fit. None of it does. You…you're smarter…than this."

"Not anymore," the predator replied and gently dropped one of his knees to the floor. "Thanks to you. I told you –" a dry laugh, an exasperated shake of his head, "– I never had a choice."

And he withdrew his hands, reached both of them around his neck to the zipper that held his mask in place. It took a second or two for the doctor to understand what he was doing, and when he did he uttered a desperate sound halfway between a gasp and a shout.

His hands flew up, a flutter of bird's wings, and landed on each side of the predator's face. The firm touch pressed through the mask, and the predator froze. Felt the cold palms burn into him like the eyes below were burning into him.

There it was. He could almost see it. The bridge, a neon strip linking them to each other, its light pulsing violently in both directions. The predator couldn't breathe.

He slid his hands onto the doctor's, his heated skin covering scabbed, cold knuckles and jagged fingernails. His prize tried to pull away, but he held him still. Steered his hands downwards and onto his chest.

"Do you feel that?" he whispered, pressing the hands into the stiff fabric of his jacket. "My heart. It's racing."

Virtually crammed against the wall, the doctor couldn't get away, and it was with a fleeting grimace that he sucked a fractured breath into his lungs and said, quite unsteadily, "You can still end this."

He was still profiling. It was there in his eyes, in that razor sharp intelligence – he was reading him faster than a book. How he could, how it was even in his power, was more than the predator could comprehend.

"End it?" he said. "Why would I want to do that?"

"Because you're smarter than this," the doctor repeated entreatingly. "You know…you _know _this was a bad idea from the get-go. We have a term for it. You're devolving. I can see it; you must be able to see it, too. Please. Please…"

The bridge was blazing between them. For one glorious moment, they were equals. The same. For one glorious moment, the predator was outside himself and in the skin of his prize. The need to unite with him, to be inside him reared up through the turmoil and clamped its claws around him, but for some reason, he was able to rein it in. He released the doctor's hands in order to grasp his head, much like he had grasped the predator's only moments ago.

"Please what?" he hissed, dropping his other knee and edging closer until his face was inches from his prize's bloodless one. "Let you go?"

"You can, you can do that," the doctor stammered. "Don't show me your face, I know you have no intention of showing me your face even if you decide to kill me. You can drug me, you can leave me outside a hospital or, or anywhere for that matter, just – please –"

If only to shut him up, the predator forced a version of a kiss onto his lips. They were cold and resisting, but the inside of his mouth was hot and soft and so wonderful that tears sprung without warning to his eyes. The ache in his heart beginning to burn and blister, reaching a level of intensity that was barely manageable. He angled his head to deepen the contact, which could indeed have been a kiss in another life, another time. Another world. The sensation of becoming one with him in a purely metaphysical sense was no longer in his reach, it was gone, yet he couldn't seem to get close enough.

It was from across an unknowable abyss that he became aware that the doctor's hands were moving. While unresisting if unwilling under his captor, he had focused his efforts elsewhere – dazedly, the predator broke away just in time to see a silver flash of metal out of the corner of his eye.

There was no time to wonder how he had managed to get the knife from his pocket. Putting his own hands in motion, he clawed for the thin white wrist, hearing himself hack out a sound of surprised protest as he did so. The doctor was fast, much too fast, displaying both a dexterity and speed that did not mesh with the weakened state he had by all appearances spiralled into during the night. Confused glimpses of his face in the sudden struggle showed a look of wild concentration, teeth gritted and eyes ablaze. He had planned this.

Only seconds. Five, maybe ten of them. Having already marked the spot he would aim for, the doctor fulfilled the trajectory with the adrenaline-fuelled strength of desperation, and the predator was already beaten, his slow reaction had doomed him from the off. But he still had the advantage of brute force and an uninjured, larger body, and it was just barely that his fingers gained purchase on the doctor's wrist at the very same moment that the blade sunk through the skin of his neck.

It didn't strike all the way home, but it struck nonetheless. With a slight delay the pain reached him, generously spiked with an abrupt onslaught of purest panic.

His jugular. If the doctor's aim had been true…

Somehow he managed to get the knife from him using one hand. Slapped the other over the wound, where blood instantly seeped slick and hot through his fingers. Without wasting another flyaway thought, he stumbled upright and away from his prize, who was nothing more than a tilting, spinning image below. Snatches of an animal glare drilling from shadowed sockets, perhaps victorious, he stayed on the floor like a cornered fox as the predator clumsily but swiftly made his retreat, backing up the first steps of the stairs before turning and ascending in a scrambled rush.

Moving along a single line, his brain was functioning well enough to guide him through the hall and into the bathroom. His reflection was suddenly there, looking wildly back at him, and the blood was a splash of vivid red across the left side of his jaw and neck and the hand covering it. It was gushing, trickling down under his clothes, but there were no spurts of red, no fountain-like cascades to indicate that his heart was pumping it directly through the jugular. If any such damage had been done, he couldn't see it.

Relief set in and instantly scattered the panic. Purposefully steadying his breaths, he ducked under the sink for the first-aid kit – not yet packed, by some strike of wonder – and slammed it open onto the toilet lid. He then took a hand towel from its hook and pressed it onto the wound. Leaning close to the mirror, he confirmed that it seemed to be bleeding slowly enough for him to be able to stem the flow himself. No hospitals, no backup-plans. No emergency. He couldn't tell in the aftershock of such undiluted fear whether the fates were still with him, but he sent them a silent prayer of thanks nonetheless.

When his thoughts eventually cleared enough to let him contemplate what had just happened, he was distantly surprised to find that he was more amazed than he was angered. Staring at the bright red blossoms soaking through the white terrycloth, he felt a shaky laugh bubble up. It sounded eerie in the small, clean space, with his bleeding and wild-eyed reflection gazing out of the mirror.

The very first boy he ever took had injured him. Bitten a chunk of skin right out of his forearm. Ironically, he'd had to render the wound unrecognizable using the same method that he'd already utilized on the boy himself. It had infuriated him, then. He had spent a good three hours simply informing him how much so.

He knew he would do no such thing today.

Before getting to work patching himself up, he went back through the hall to lock the basement door. Imagined briefly how the sound of the turning key would affect the doctor. He then followed the breadcrumb trace of blood droplets on the floor back to the bathroom, where he proceeded to try and close the wound – a jagged, inch-long gash – using only band-aids and gauze. He had a curved needle and black surgical thread in the kit, but, standing back to inspect his handiwork, assessed he wouldn't need them – nor was he that certain he could manage stitches without harming himself further. Hopefully, if he kept pressure on it and wrapped it tight, it would close on its own.

He'd been lucky. Touching a finger to the blood-smeared skin, he determined that the distance between the wound and his jugular vein was less than an inch. A working knowledge of the human anatomy was doubtless one of the doctor's least spectacular skills, and if he'd succeeded the predator knew he'd be dead by now. His prize would have found a way to get free from his chain, would have emerged into the house and headed directly for the phone. Perhaps he would have been unable to locate the unplugged cord, would have gone out the door instead and appeared like a nightmare vision on a neighbor's front steps, skin and bones and over three days' worth of abuse. Maybe it would even have been the observant David Malcolm who opened his door to him and called whoever it would have been that the doctor wished to reach first.

He would have been saved. He would have saved himself.

In a turn for the absurd, the predator thought he detected just a note of disappointment on his prize's behalf. He'd been so close.

The bleeding wouldn't stop completely, but it would have to do. Finally uttering a curse, he pressed the towel onto his neck and sent another prayer to whoever would listen that it would be sufficient. If he kept still, kept clear of the basement for a few hours he would have a better idea of the damage.

Only now he did he register the full scope of the pain, throbbing from his neck to his shoulders and into his arms. He paced into the living room to get some fresh clothes from the bag, and it was when he began to dress himself that he realized he was shaking. Slight, uncontrollable tremors in both the hand he could use and the one he'd knotted in the towel.

Must be the blood loss. Must be. It would fade.

Dusk was misting across the sky. Coral pink staining the horizon. Watching it come through the window, he shifted hands on the towel and managed to work the last button on his shirt. His whole body was tangibly weak, his breaths thin and shallow. Warm wetness kept soaking through the towel, perhaps too much of it. The pain pounding through all of it, getting harder to ignore with each passing second.

He crossed to the basement door, pulled air as far into his lungs as he could manage. Rested his forehead on the cold, pitiless steel of the door. Tried to feel the presence below, willing his thoughts to untangle.

For the second time in only days, he was startled by the doorbell.

* * *

"I can't see a thing. The lights are off."

Prentiss raked a hand through her hair and released a frustrated sigh. Backing away from the window she turned a dark look on her supervisor. "There's nobody in there."

"Seems that way," Hotch muttered, squinting up at Michael Jones' front door. "According to his office he frequently works from home, but they also said that he drops off the face of the earth every once in a while. Some kind of eccentric genius, apparently."

"Well, that doesn't fit the profile," Prentiss pointed out. "We're wasting our time. There's no car in the driveway, I can't hear this dog he's supposed to have…"

"He's not home," Hotch agreed, and he was already heading for the car.

When they drove off to the next location, he added in an all-too steady voice, "But I don't like how empty the place looks."

The tightness around his mouth, fit to snap these past days, spoke more levels than Emily could count.

He took out his cell phone. "We'll get a warrant just in case."

* * *

Another night was falling. The fourth night of Supervisory Special Agent Reid's imprisonment in a murderer's basement. The fourth night of a tumultuous bad dream involving an entire city. A bad dream because, when it was all over, the grip it had once held on the denizens would wash away like water. Would leave only vague memories, would inspire no more than the odd chill whenever the subject was brought up. Life, true to habit, would move on. The steady pace of passing days would erode it away until it was no more than a grain of sand underfoot. The bad things that had once happened to other people, to strangers, would not remain with those who had followed the story in the newspapers. The people whose lives had truly been touched would scatter, go their separate ways, and the handful of suicides that would take the lives of bereaved mothers, fathers and lovers over the following years would go largely unnoticed in the bigger picture. Not even a minute detail in the corner of the canvas. Not even a tear in it.

What would stay here, in these streets, was the name of the man who had laid all these lives in ruin. The man who had taken their sons, their fathers, their husbands and brothers. The Riverside Stalker – a designation not even relating to this city but another place altogether. Soon enough, the name a priest had once given him would reach the public. His middle name would become attached to it, as so often happened when an otherwise forgettable title needed to be made memorable. Soon enough, Michael Ray Jones would be made infamous.

But so far, it was only the fourth night. The last stages of a process fifteen times tried and long ago perfected. Though he would never – not ever – refer to himself as victim number sixteen, or seven for that matter, Spencer Reid was beginning to accept the imminent end of his life.

He had tried. He had mustered every ounce of strength, every remnant of fight he had left, and he had tried. A final, possibly suicidal attempt at freedom. An opportunity had come his way and he had seized it – no one would ever be able to say differently. The scar would be a nasty one.

After the doomsday sound of the key turning in its lock had reverberated down the basement steps, he had come to know hopelessness in its rawest, cruellest form. The weight of it had been like the world itself on his shoulders, and he'd been certain, if only for one soul-numbing moment, that he would be crushed under it and die on the spot. It would have been a form of mercy. A sudden aneurysm, a severe stroke, a heart attack, and he would be gone in the blink of an eye. Wouldn't have had to face the bottomless despair that overtook him before acceptance finally came sneaking up on him – something he didn't realize was happening until what felt like an eternity later. Hours, probably. He'd been using the nature of the light coming down the stairs whenever the door was opened as a reference, and if his calculations were correct it was night once again. Not that the concept of time was all that clear anymore. It might be morning. A day closer to the end he now knew must come. Twenty-six years drawing to a close in the bowels of a psychopath's house. A scenario belonging to late-night television, soon to become a very sobering reality.

…_cannot break you._

Gideon's voice had come to him in the midst of darkest surrender, and for the very first time he had believed the words. He had believed them with all his heart. The look on the older agent's face when he had said them returned sharp and focused as a photograph, and it dawned on him that, when he had uttered it, he had believed it, too. Completely.

_You are stronger than him._

He didn't know about stronger, but the other part finally rang true like it had never done before. Shutting out the glaringly lit basement, the stains on the floor, the table that stood against the wall, he gazed inwards and saw that he was indeed unbroken. Whole. He could feel it in the very foundations of his being, as concrete as the physical pain that dominated on the surface. Was this how people of faith felt? So certain, so absolutely convinced that something they could not see or touch or hear was right there in front of them. As real as anything had ever been.

_They believe you can see inside men's minds._

_You know why I chose you._

On a few occasions since he ended up here, the cravings had found him. Ugly and beautiful at the same time, he had easily picked them out in the wilderness. They had been easier to bypass than the urges he would usually get – unsurprisingly, perhaps, considering his situation, but it was in the slow-motion of acceptance that he suddenly came to realize they could be beaten. They were not invincible. He could grind them into the ground and keep them there, deep down in the dirt. He had all the tools and all the knowledge he would ever need, and why this had seemed such an impossible thing before, in the world outside, he could no longer say. Any and all excuses, every rationalization lost its form and ceased to make sense.

The irony. Things coming to be so very clear in a moment like this was, he supposed, only natural. An ancient, dusty notion he had never really taken the time to dwell on. Get all the pointless clutter out of the way, stare down the barrel of the gun, and get the meaning of life for a steal.

Time was slipping further and further from his grasp. Everything slowing steadily down. He could no longer see the nightmare place he was in, could no longer smell the stink of what had happened here. The world grew dim and warm, welcoming in its impersonal entirety. A forever expanding universe all around, uncharted and bigger than even his over-developed mind could ever grasp. He was nothing. A speck of dust only seen for a nanosecond in the right light. Energy that would be used for something else, never wasted, in the ingenious machinery of life. None of this mattered in the end. None of this.

The only truly dismal thought he had room for was that of the hole his death would punch in the lives of others. His mother, first and foremost – if the news would be in her ability to digest, she would never recover. He hoped her mind would protect her. Build a wall between her and the truth. And for the first time in he didn't know how long, he thought of his father, too. A nonentity for so long, he couldn't begin to imagine how the man would take it – for all he knew he might have a new family, a new life. Perhaps it wouldn't hit him very hard. Perhaps he would be spared. There was no bitterness behind the thought, and Reid couldn't help but wonder if they would ever have met again.

Then there was the scattering of acquaintances and old friends, most of whom he almost never saw. Would they find out from the news or through the grapevine? There wasn't really anyone to sit down and make those phone calls.

Lastly – and heavily – he thought of the team. He was confident they would find and punish his killer, but whether they would be able to remain together afterwards was no certainty. If management didn't regroup them, which was a distinct possibility, they might not want to. He could imagine, if reluctantly, how he would feel if it were one of them who had died this way.

A pang of guilt-mingled sympathy hit him for Hotch, who was already being criticized for the things that had happened on his watch. One escaped mass murderer, one suspicious shooting, and one agent with dependency issues as a result of being abducted in the field. It was a testament to his awe-inspiring bureaucratic skills that he had managed to stay on this long. But with the same addict agent now abducted a second time – by a profiled subject they hadn't even managed to identify, nonetheless – his future in the Bureau would almost certainly be in the balance.

If there was an afterlife, he could effortlessly conclude that he would miss them all very much. Chess with Gideon, Morgan's gentle bullying, JJ's sweet smile and the way she called him Spence. And he would miss his mother, and he would miss his apartment, and he would miss the job.

Facing it was not nearly as bad as he had imagined it would be. It was as philosophical a moment as he'd ever encountered, and in accepting it he thought he had successfully made it a great deal less painful than his bane had in mind. He wasn't broken. He had never broken. Not in Georgia and not here. The UnSub hadn't won. Raphael had not won.

When he eventually passed into sleep, he dreamt about his childhood. About simple pleasures and a carefree existence. Even as a child he'd never been very good at either, but his subconscious seemed keen on protecting him. He was running through tall grass, was somersaulting under a violently blue sky, was laughing and thinking of absolutely nothing. All was soft and warm and safe, and all was well. It was a good dream to have as your last.

He awoke to the sound of the door. At first he couldn't comprehend why a nightmare sound like that would enter his dream, but when it was followed by steps on the concrete stairs he clawed his way back into wakefulness. He wasn't dead yet. There were still things to survive.

Scratchy whispers of rubber soles on cement. A horrendously familiar sound.

"Wake up."

Without lifting his head from where he rested it on his knees, Reid said in a startlingly weak voice, "No…let me sleep. I'm tired."

Judging by the acoustics of the reply, the UnSub was standing only feet away.

"You need to wake up."

Then he was moving, coming closer, and Reid forced himself to look up. A black figure towering over him, two blue eyes like stars in the masked face. A shock of white at his neck, was it bandages? Such a thick layer. Like a scarf. He must have done some damage, after all.

"Why?" he demanded, still in that rattling, barely living voice. Like the air had rusted in his throat. "Are you going to rape me?"

There was a pause. The menace of that word lingering on the silence.

Moving again; he was beside him, he was dropping into a crouch in customary disregard for personal space. One hand was up, coming towards his face, and he was too weak to shy away as fingers softy brushed his cheek. When the UnSub spoke again it was in a low, breathless tone, as though he dreaded his own words.

"It's time."

* * *

Jason Gideon had his face in his hands.

It was a display they had rarely seen from him, and exclusively at times such as these. When hope wasn't in sight. Generally he could see things coming before any of them, and this was all too abrupt. Alien. But then, the situation itself was alien. Unreal. Even four days in, it was inconceivable.

Of the six of them, JJ, Morgan and Garcia had been the least proficient in accepting it – or had seemed to be, at least. Gideon had if anything shown the most confidence in the case. He had made numerous updates to the profile; had interviewed more people than two hands could count; had told them again and again that the possibility of not catching this UnSub did not exist. He would be in custody, and soon. He would be found. The others had gathered strength from his strength, had found sanity in his calm. JJ, especially, had stayed close to him like he was a talisman, and she didn't hide her tears, now, as he sat with his head in his hands.

"It's been four days," he said, voice muffled by his palms. They had gathered in a conference room at the police station, a meeting per his request, and while some of them – Derek Morgan in particular – exuded restless impatience there was a mood so dark and heavy in the soundproofed room that it seemed to palpably thicken the air. Lace it with all the different poisons of a slowly coming doom.

"We've got at least one more day."

JJ, her tears as evident in her voice as they were in her eyes. With a small sniffle, she added somewhat more steadily, "We can't go by the previous pattern, it's – he's most likely still alive."

"Yes," Gideon agreed reasonably, and at long last raised his piercing stare to look around at them. "He probably is. For now."

The silence that followed this was stretched thin and taut, bending under the weight of what went unuttered. It was Morgan who broke it, and while his voice held no promise of tears it trembled with an assortment of unclouded emotions.

"What are you saying?"

When no answer was offered, he leaned forward in his chair and went on, "We are not giving up. This isn't over yet." Glaring at each of them in turn, he bared his teeth and hissed, "It can't be over. You hear me, Gideon? Don't you _dare_ say it's over."

"It's not over," Gideon said softly, spreading his hands over the table in appeasement. "It's not over. It won't be over until we have the UnSub in custody. I know that as well as you do."

"Then what the hell –"

"What he's trying to say," Hotch interrupted loudly, "Is that we have to keep our heads, no matter…" Cutting himself off, he placed a loose fist over his mouth. Eyes petrified and hard as stone. "No matter…what happens…in the next couple of days."

Gideon, who had splayed his hands on the tabletop, nodded slowly. His wise face was drawn and pale, and there was a stillness about him that was decidedly ominous.

"We have to stop and just – breathe," he said quietly, releasing a breath as if to illustrate his words. "We have to make room for the inevitable."

"Inevitable?" Morgan repeated in a dangerously low voice, and Garcia, who was in the corner with her laptop, watched him with something like panic. "What is this?"

"Derek," Hotch tried, and while it didn't clear the tension from his features it did shut him up. Leaning back again, he put the necessary barriers up around his temper. Breathed slowly and carefully through his nose.

Prentiss shifted in her seat. "So…what's next?"

They all turned to look at her, and she added shakily, "I mean – I know it's not…possible to…to take this in. But Gideon's right. If this victim were anyone else…"

"It's not anyone else," JJ snapped. "This is Reid we're talking about."

A tear brimmed over; trickled solemnly down her cheek. Prentiss stared into the table, her own eyes dry but holding a certain brittle flatness that betrayed her sadness just as thoroughly.

"I know," she said in a near-whisper.

Silence yet again. Too many truths that couldn't be spoken.

"It's time we face what we all know has to happen," Gideon finally said. He spoke slowly, audibly forcing the words out. "It's time we…prepare. When Reid's body turns up…" A note of vehemence bubbled up, simmering just below the surface, "we have to keep hunting this monster. We have to find him and bring him to justice."

"They have the death penalty here," JJ put in, almost absently. Gideon stared at her for a moment, before nodding a second time.

"That's right," he agreed flatly. "He's sure to get what he deserves."

And the stillness took over again, wrapping its deadening weight over their shoulders as the words were allowed to hang on the air.

When the sound of a ringing cell phone broke the spell, the reaction was delayed by a few seconds while it was determined whose it was.

Half-sluggish, half-harassed, Hotch blinked and slipped his hand inside his jacket to retrieve the offending item. "Hotchner," he practically snarled into the mouthpiece.

As he listened to what was said on the other end, no more than a murmur to the rest of them, something altogether unfamiliar alighted on his face. Like Gideon's head in his hands, it was too rare to categorize. In the breathless seconds it took them to identify it, the world crumbled.

Before Hotch even got to take the phone from his ear, Garcia had let out a wordless cry. He looked at her, then at Gideon, then at the rest of them. Still the clearest, truest terror could be read on his face.

He took a breath, and then he told them.

"They've found a body."


	7. Chapter 7

AN: A big, wet, kinky thank you to all the beautiful perverts who have taken the time to review this twisted fit of fangirl-crazy (which really shouldn't have been allowed to see the light of day like, ever. Seriously.) I love you guys.

**7**

First on the scene after Officer Nuñez was her supervisor, Detective Finnerty. Since the Stalker investigation was considered top priority, the captain himself was in charge of it, but as his second in command Finnerty was arguably the one who would have headed it had the media coverage been any less ferocious. He'd worked these streets for over twenty years, first as a beat cop, then in the narcotics unit, and now as a homicide taskforce leader, and he could safely say that he'd never before been called to the site of a discovered body that was only a short sprint away.

He brought all the relevant personnel within shouting range with him – which was to say not enough this close to shift change, with only one fellow detective and two uniforms still finishing up paperwork in the homicide bullpen. They navigated their way through the building at a hurried trot, emerging into the parking lot not two minutes after Finnerty had received the call. At this hour, it was empty but for one or two cars – social workers or bail posters, if Finnerty had to guess – and their footsteps echoed eerily across the black stretch of asphalt as they made for the chain link gate down one end. He could sense an all-too familiar excitement from the younger of the uniforms, a kid no older than twenty, while the detective and the older officers were simply tense and taciturn. This wasn't New York or Detroit; psycho killers had been thankfully few and far between around here, but they had seen bad things and were never eager to see more. Finnerty himself had worked on a serial, once, albeit one that hadn't been this sophisticated, and he led them all into the alley with a cold knot of dread in his chest. He could see the night that lay ahead, could feel it already settling its lead weight in his limbs, a reluctance so complete that it was physically difficult to pass through the open gates and into the alley. Into the storm.

Nuñez was standing with her back to the body, dancing nervously on the spot with one hand clutching at her radio. They had to walk past her to get a good look at what looked initially like nothing more than a vaguely man-shaped, bundled blanket.

Finnerty saw the hand first, stark white against the black tarmac. Like a dead spider curled on its back. The bloody arm, hinged to a bony shoulder; the roughly circular burns that were by now an unmistakable sight; the equally damaged upper torso that emerged from folds of dark green wool.

"I moved the blanket, sir," Nuñez told him anxiously. "I thought it was a woman, I – sir, I thought he was alive, so I –"

"It's okay," he cut her off, eyes on the boy on the ground. "You didn't touch him after that, did you?"

"No, sir," she replied instantly. The other detective, whose name was Schultz, came up next to him and uttered a soft curse at the sight below. Behind him, one of the senior officers was instructing the other two where to begin securing the scene; the kid had initially craned his neck to see but was now faintly green in the face, holding a hand over his mouth as his partner steadied him.

Finnerty turned to Nuñez. "Did you call forensics?"

She blinked, swallowed twice. "I – no, I didn't, I…"

"You always call forensics," he said sharply, and her already pale face went white. "We can't do shit here until the scene's processed."

"The lab's around the corner, Finn," Schultz spoke up, already dialing a number on his cell phone. "We'll call them now, what's a few minutes..."

"A few minutes is not protocol," Finnerty countered, but Schultz was already moving away with the phone to his ear. "Damn it," he added quietly to no one in particular and took a couple of steps back from the body, crossing himself as he went. A contaminated scene would do no one any good, and he didn't want to think about how the feds would react if they knew a local detective had been called but not a single person who could actually examine the body. Strictly speaking, Nuñez should've called the suits first, then the crime scene unit, then Finnerty. As it were, they could only look from a careful distance at the broken young man who lay spilling out of a rudimentary, unworthy shroud in a dark alley.

Like shocks of electricity, images of the behavioral analyst who had gone missing four days ago kept flickering through his thoughts. He recalled a lanky, bookish creature who had seemed more than a little odd. Elbow patches and corduroy, row of pencils in a breast-pocket. Shaggy hair and an oversized cardigan not unlike one he remembered his father often wearing after retirement. He'd kept his pipe and tobacco in one spacious pocket, and the young agent had looked like he might have had done the same. An old man in a college kid's body.

Squinting down at the corpse, he found it hard to put the two together. The rail-thin youth who talked like someone had shoved an encyclopedia down his throat and this Sally in the alley who was no Sally at all. The awkward professor with his constant cup of coffee and this piece of garbage someone had audaciously discarded in Finnerty's own backyard.

But there was no question. Even with the bruising, he didn't have to take a closer look to know. They were one and the same.

As he took out his own cell phone, he saw that mere minutes had passed since Nuñez's call.

Schultz came back just as he was about to dial Aaron Hotchner's number. "They're on their way," he informed him. "Coroner, too. Five minutes."

"Okay. That's fine. I have to call the feds." He held up the phone, and Schultz grimaced.

"Good luck."

Agent Hotchner answered the call after three long signals, and he hung up without a word in the immediate seconds after receiving the news. Finnerty felt the cold dread in his chest grow colder, and as Schultz took Nuñez with him back out to the parking lot to organize to the unpleasant task of calling the cavalry, he allowed himself a moment to just gather his wits. Alone with the body, he could not look anywhere else, and he tried to think of his daughter and the pancakes they'd had together just this morning. Her smile and her kindness and how the world made sense because of her.

They came the same way Finnerty had come, across the parking lot. Schultz waved them through, and the uniforms who had taken up sentry at the freshly posted police ribbon let them pass without delay.

He was surprised to see all six of them, and while he didn't really expect any kind of scene to take place he was glad to have Schultz and the officers there – all six faces and all six body languages told him as clearly as a diagram that, had they been anything other than FBI agents, they would have been screaming at the top of their lungs and falling to their knees to pound the ground until their hands bled. Agent Jareau, who he had dealt with more than any of the others, was not the only one who was openly crying – another blonde, who he couldn't remember the name of but who he recognized as the feds' resident computer geek, had both hands over her face and was sobbing quite audibly.

Finnerty came to intercept them several feet from the body, just to make sure they had no inclinations to trample onto the scene. Just as sirens began to sound somewhere very close, he got the worst out of the way and said firmly but gently, "It's him."

"We figured as much," Hotchner said tightly, and if Finnerty had thought the man could never get more serious he had been sorely mistaken.

"We need to see him," Agent Gideon stated in a tone that wasn't open for discussion, and Finnerty's heart sank.

"I'm afraid that's not possible. We're still waiting for forensics."

"Doesn't matter," Gideon insisted. "We need to see him."

There was a brief but strained pause, before Finnerty tried in as reasonable a voice as he could muster, "The scene hasn't been processed yet."

But it was no use. Stepping away from the sobbing blonde, whom he had been holding around the shoulders, Agent Morgan approached him. A head taller, his muscular frame was wound with something decidedly explosive.

"And this case has been federal for the past twelve hours," he said quietly, his words brimming with that same tinderbox emotion. "Now get out of the goddamned way."

Looking automatically to Hotchner for some form of compromise and seeing only dark determination there, Finnerty heaved a sigh. Empathy won over professional pride after a very short struggle, and he stepped reluctantly aside. "Suit yourselves."

Morgan led the way, followed instantly by Hotchner and Gideon. After a short moment of what must have been hesitation, the dark-haired Agent Prentiss went after them, leaving Agent Jareau to comfort the woman in the neon pink pants. As she hugged her, she looked over the top of her platinum white head towards the place where the body laid, her face completely stiff and her blue eyes much too wide as more tears rolled down her doll-like face. She was Lydia's age, and Finnerty couldn't bear to look at her. Turning away, he instead followed the other agents back to the body.

They had halted a rough three feet off, and now stood rigidly next to each other in identical, frozen reluctance. Coming up beside Agent Prentiss, he read expressions of shock and devastation on their usually so composed features, and the sight was, to put it mildly, unsettling. Agents Morgan and Gideon were on different ends of the same spectrum, the former radiating a kind of mercurial, half-suppressed fury while the latter rubbed a hand over his face and released a sigh so heavy and suffused with desolation that it seemed to taint the air.

"Oh my God," Agent Prentiss said faintly. "It's him. It's Reid. Oh my God…"

And she sucked in a sharp breath, turned away and headed down the other end of the alley, away from the others. Finnerty saw her double over, heard her make little sounds of denial as she dragged down breath after breath of chilly midnight air. Her colleagues left her to it, didn't even look her way, as if they knew without communication that she needed the space.

"This is a message," Hotchner was saying, eyes darting over the injuries that were visible. "The only reason he would dump him here is to make a point."

"To hurt us," Gideon put in, very softly. An unmistakable grimace of pain was half-formed on his face.

Agent Morgan, who had been silent since laying eyes on the body, shook his head slowly.

"Something's not right," he muttered hoarsely. "Something's wrong with this scene."

"The blanket," Gideon said.

"There's too much blood. He didn't clean him like he did the others." Hotchner.

And before Finnerty could say a single word, Agent Morgan was moving, taking two long strides across to crouch directly beside the body. Finnerty held his breath; although the agent kept his hands to himself, he was all too aware that even the act of breathing on a corpse these days could be enough to screw up a trial.

Tilting his head to the side, Agent Morgan looked into the ruined face below. Finnerty thought he could discern the suggestion of a shine in his dark eyes, the beginnings of grief on his handsome face.

"He wouldn't leave a blanket like this," he said quietly, almost fearfully. "Not unless he felt differently about this vict – about Reid. It's…wrapped around him. Protective."

He stared down at the young man who had presumably been his friend, and Finnerty was convinced he would either burst into tears or find something he could destroy within seconds. But he only drew a tremulous breath, lowering himself closer to the body.

"Oh, Reid," he said, broken-heartedly. He sat perfectly still, balancing on his toes, seeming to force himself to take in what he was seeing as more sirens sang into the night. Blues and reds flashing over the ground, over the dirty brick wall of the alley. Over Agent Reid's still face. They could hear movement in the parking lot, footsteps and radio static and shouted instructions. A chopper whirred into gear high above their heads.

"He shut his eyes," Morgan murmured, seemingly to himself. "He didn't do that with any of the others."

Finnerty frowned. The blind, staring eyes of the six other boys flickered through his head. Agent Reid's were closed. Like he was sleeping.

"Did you…" Morgan went on, still in a murmur, and if he finished the sentence Finnerty didn't hear it. He was still, too still, and to Finnerty's horror he reached a hand towards the corpse.

"Morgan," Hotchner said warningly, but it was too late. He was touching it. At first, Finnerty thought he was going to pick up the hand that lay slung out on the asphalt and hold it like a lover, but he simply slipped two fingers onto the wrist. As if to…

"You don't need to do that!" he heard himself protest; Morgan raised his other hand in a silencing gesture, which was a peculiar thing to do if you'd just knowingly messed up an unprocessed crime scene.

"Morgan?" Hotchner said again, taking a slow step closer, and this time when he said the name it was with confusion. Next to him, Agent Gideon's face had tightened into a frown.

Five seconds, no more, before a shout erupted from below.

"I've got a pulse!"

Looking wildly up at them, Derek Morgan's face was transformed.

"Call an ambulance! He's alive!"

* * *

He was dying. It would happen soon. He could feel it. A stone-solid knowledge resting over everything. If there had been a possibility of survival, he had spent it.

The house felt cold. Like the air conditioning had broken. All but shivering, he paced through the rooms, the darkened spaces that made up the building's structure. Walls, floors and ceilings, plaster and paint and smooth wooden boards underfoot. Sockets and switches in the walls, ducts from which artificially fresh air streamed quite steadily. Doors and windows to shut out the world.

The dog was in his basket on the living room floor. He watched his master move slowly to and fro through the house, as if he could sense that something was not as it should be. The predator had poured him two full bowls of food and water, since there was no telling how long it would take before someone found him. Before someone found them both.

The world had gone blurry around the edges. Like an old television flashback sequence. It was all vaguely unhinged, sort of abstract and without logic, and he wasn't entirely certain how he'd managed to return the doctor without driving into a ditch or a lamppost or the front of his house. He must have been running on fumes, must have let the fates guide him again. Guide him back to where it had all started, to the police station and the old fire escape that had let him inside on that night. To the beginning, and to the end, to the circle closing so beautifully that he knew there was no point in wondering even for a second whether it had been worth it.

It was all he had ever lived for, after all. He _could_ have lived without it, could've forced himself into a different mold, but it would have been half a life, a ghost's existence. It had taken him this long to learn that he would rather die. It had taken the doctor to teach him. So it wasn't a bad way to go, really. Dying here, and now, and for this purpose. For him. It was as meaningful an end as he could ever have hoped to see.

On the few fleeting occasions that he had contemplated his mortality, he had always assumed that he would fall victim to illness. Old age had seemed too conceited an idea, simply going in his sleep somehow more than he should be able to hope for. No, his money had been on cancer, or maybe a heart condition like the one his grandfather had succumbed to. Something mundane that took more lives than war. Inelegant and without meaning.

More frequently, he had considered the possibility of dying in prison or at the wrong end of a standard issue firearm. Lethal injection, perhaps. But it had never stuck, had never felt real. He had always been so sure of his process, had always been so confident that, if he kept to the checklist and continued to perfect his routines, he would never be caught. It hadn't been some notion of self-importance or an overblown ego – he would never permit himself that kind of delusion – but a realistic measure of his abilities. He left no evidence, left no geographical pattern, left nothing whatsoever apart from the bodies. Familiar with the methods that were used to track down offenders such as himself, he was careful to live his life in a way that aroused no suspicion. Rather than making himself completely invisible, he tried to maintain a lifestyle that was normal but not overly average. Rather than suppressing the parts of his personality that might draw attention to him he let them hang out, let them be something others would like or even admire. He had developed interests, had perfected skills, had taught himself to enjoy the casual company of others. There had been friends, there had been lovers, there had been arguments and break-ups and personal problems. The art of offender profiling, which people like him often failed to defeat the efficiency of, had only been one of many exact and inexact sciences he had read up on in order to fly under their radar. They were just tools, and he had it made a point to render them useless.

He was the first to admit that his success at evading capture had been something he took pride in. While not emotionally invested in the frustration or hopelessness of those who hunted him, he took a general pleasure in being not one but several steps ahead. It wasn't until the doctor that he first saw a deeper pleasure in defeating them. But then he was the first to be one of them.

There would be no defeat. No deeper pleasure, no gentle boost to his ego. It had only ever been a bonus, nothing more, and he couldn't say with even a hint of sincerity that he regretted it. At this point, he literally could not care less.

He stood in the door to his study for several minutes, staring at the computer. Felt the dog's watchful eyes on him from the living room. A stab of sadness for the animal, who had only ever known and loved one human being regardless of what that human being had done to others. To him, the predator had always been the perfect pack leader. He hoped someone strong and energetic would come to take care of him, even though he was a murderer's pet. Someone who could take him running.

There was no reason to dispose of the computer, something he would most likely not have been able to do had it been necessary. His strength was all but tapped. It would have involved a hammer and, to some extent, the fireplace, and not having to do it felt strange. His routine, his beautiful routine, was moot. The last integral part of him slipping downstream and out of sight. The last seam unraveling, leaving nothing to hold his structure together. Since it had been destined to happen for so long, now, the sensation wasn't particularly noteworthy. More of a relief than anything else, to finally be rid of the stubborn dregs that had clung to the bottom of him.

The basement door stared at him when he turned away, with its dark brown stains around the handle where he had fumbled after the doctor stabbed him. The trace of blood still dotted a path from the bathroom, and he followed it to the door. Halted a foot short of it as the doctor's absence drifted through the impenetrable steel, a near-physical emptiness like a vacuum.

This was not grief. He had passed the stage of grief, couldn't even see it behind him anymore. This was simply death.

Taking a deep breath, he grasped the handle and pulled the door open. The basement angled up the steps, greeted him with a hollow whisper as air rushed down into the compact space. It was still lit, revealing even from above the nature of the use it had been put to. A broken string of pearls, the predator's blood lay in small drops along the steep length of the stairs, dark red against the white concrete, meeting with the many leavings of the doctor's below. Uniting them still.

He descended. One last time, he descended. Let the door fall shut behind him, let the basement swallow him as he slowly followed the crusted red trace down the stairs. The cold air was still thick with the smell of sex and violence, metallic and sharp and sickly sweet, and to his dismay he couldn't discern the doctor's scent in its midst. It had left with him.

The floor was under his feet; the past days' activities written all around him. The chain, snaking into the corner where he had loosened it from the doctor's ankle. The table, pushed against the wall, almost completely drenched in coppery red. The recollection of his body strapped to it, helpless and ripe for the taking, ghosted through with a shadow of plummeting regret. He crossed to the sizeable bloodstain near the corner where he had first taken him, a remnant of broken virginity, and replayed the moment in his mind. Welcomed its melancholy. The doctor's skin, the scent of it, his long and wiry muscles. His face. Delicate and fine-boned, in beautiful balance with its angled jaw and heavy brow. Imperfect enough to be more than just esthetically pleasing. And his eyes. His eyes…

He fell to his knees. Kept the memory of the prize crisp in his mind. The fifteen before him, who had all been beautiful, swam below it. Their names were there, too, he couldn't seem to shake them, but it was alright. It would be over, soon. That was why he was here. That was why he had made this last and final descent.

He could think of no better place to die.

* * *

The ambulance got there before the crime scene team. Not even two minutes; more than enough time to ascertain that Agent Reid was not only alive but breathing steadily if very shallowly; the rise and fall of his stomach was hidden under the blanket and much too subtle for the naked eye to see. It was a rhythm of deep unconsciousness, something Morgan further confirmed by lifting Reid's lids and shouting his name, all to no avail. If he could have shaken him he would have, but even in the sudden chaos he knew as well as anyone not to touch him more than he had to. There was no way to know what kind of internal damage had been done to him in addition to what they could see – folding aside as much of the blanket as he could without moving him he revealed more bruises and cuts and, unexpectedly, a pair of sweatpants that were considerably cleaner than he was.

As confusion mounted, he, Hotch and Gideon stayed near Reid while the others strode to immediate action, that first flare of knee-buckling relief turning into productivity like the flick of a switch. Prentiss rushed off towards the mouth of the alley to help JJ calm a very confused Garcia, who was still clinging to the former as she attempted to digest the new information. They didn't need any orders from Hotch to know what they should be doing, and together they went out into the parking lot to assist the equally confused Detective Schultz. In less than a minute the process that had been started upon finding a body was called to a screeching halt, making room for one that was similar but altogether different. The night was suddenly not as dark, the air not as thick, the smell of blood and sweat that had had time to settle in the alley not as sickening. Where before there had been a tangible sense of defeat, there was now a flurry of activity that held the promise of hope.

The ambulance turned into the parking lot, its flashing lights mingling with those of the squad cars that already waited there, and under much shouting and excitement the paramedics were directed into the alley. The sound of the gurney's wheels on the asphalt, in actuality quite indistinguishable from the sound a shopping cart would make, was like music to their ears.

Reluctantly, Morgan, Hotch and Gideon stepped back. Assuring the medics that they hadn't moved him even an inch, they watched, their breaths suspended, as Reid was gently eased away from the dirty brick wall of the alley and laid out flat on his back. A brace was secured around his neck, an IV was started, and his vitals were thoroughly checked. The process was practiced, swift and impersonal, and the profilers had no difficulty deriving from the medical jargon that there appeared to be nothing immediately life-threatening to take into account.

Morgan went in the ambulance. His eyes stayed on Reid like searchlights, only darting to the faces of the paramedics when they addressed him to keep him informed or get him out of their way. Each and every prayer he could recall the words of was rolling silently through his head.

Meanwhile, Hotch and Gideon had to go back through the station house to get to the parking garage, find one of the cars that had been assigned to the team and, finally, navigate their way out into the street and to the hospital they had been informed Reid would be taken to. They passed Erin Strauss in the corridor, and Hotch graced her only with a terse affirmation that Dr Reid was not dead, after all, before turning away and ignoring each and every word she shouted at his retreating back.

"Could he have drugged him?" Gideon muttered as he fastened his seatbelt. It was unclear whether he was talking to himself or not, but Hotch answered him nonetheless.

"Drugged him and left him behind the police station?"

Utilizing his FBI training as ruthlessly as if he were embarking on a high-speed car chase, he steered the SUV out into the dark street with a scream of burning rubber. "It makes no sense," he went on. "What would be the point?"

Gideon steadied himself against the glove compartment. He was staring into the street as it rushed towards them, but appeared not to see it. "Isn't it obvious?"

Shifting his attention from the road for a short moment, Hotch shot him a look of alarmed incomprehension. "It is?"

"We've always known he kills his victims out of necessity," Gideon replied. They could hear the ambulance amidst the chorus of police sirens somewhere ahead. "He doesn't want them dead. It's not the act of murder that gives him his release. For some reason, he decided not to do go through with it this time."

"He decided to let him live," Hotch murmured. "But why?"

"He must have been aware of the risks involved in taking this particular victim," Gideon said. "Maybe he figured it wasn't worth it."

Hotch raised his eyebrows. Ominous silence stretched across the length of a pounding heartbeat. "You really believe that?"

Ahead, they could see colored light dancing over a tall sign; moments later they were close enough to see the word _emergency_ amidst the blues and reds. Gideon shook his head.

"No. No, I don't."

They knew they wouldn't be allowed into the ambulance bay, and as the SUV drove past the entryway Morgan saw it as a flash of metal out of the corner of his eye. He had leapt out of the back to make way for the gurney, and even though he had spent the past minute staring at it, the sight of Reid's face, as white as the neck brace that held his head in place, was startling in the clear white light spilling from the emergency room entrance. The medics had established that he was hypothermic and had wrapped a blanket tightly over his body, and as they deftly set him down on the asphalt he was so still he looked like a doll stuffed feet-first into in a sock.

Two doctors in white coats and a single nurse were waiting for them. Morgan dropped behind the gurney to give them room, but he had no difficulty keeping up with them as they started at a jog towards the glass doors. Sliding open with a soft hiss, they admitted them into a spacious, bright waiting area, and Morgan had time to take note of the half dozen people who looked up to watch them pass.

Ahead of him, the paramedics were relaying the specifics of Reid's condition to the doctors. He possessed a basic understanding of what they were saying, and it was vaguely bizarre, hearing the details of what had been done to his colleague over the course of several days expressed in such dry, scientific terms. He was far from ready to accept that Reid had been put through the same hell as the UnSub's previous victims, but now it was coming at him from all directions, the dark knowledge he had been suppressing these past four days in order to keep his wits about him, hurling at him in the undeniable shape of facts. He had seen the wounds, the burns on his shoulders, the blood, but it was only now that he began to fully grasp the reality of it.

His mind was still reeling when he sat down in the corridor. The nurse had been forced to tell him twice that he couldn't go with Reid, since it hadn't registered at all the first time, and he now placed his head purposefully between his knees and took several measured breaths. The air smelled unpleasantly of disinfectant and human waste, but he took it deep into his lungs nonetheless, willing his thoughts to come together.

By the time Hotch and Gideon found him, he was on his feet, pacing back and forth outside the swinging doors through which Reid had been taken.

"Do they know anything?" Hotch said without preamble. "How is he?"

Morgan rubbed one big hand over his face. Took another deep breath, and briefed them to the best of his ability. He wasn't at his most coherent nor his most professional, but neither of them seemed to care or even notice. They found chairs and sat down with him, heedless of the trickle of traffic that passed through the corridor. Down the other end, another group of chairs held another group of people, a family by the looks of them, and there was a distinct sense of suspended fear lacing the air. Dark anticipation, a dare to hope resting over the faded linoleum floors. Several minutes passed before any of them moved a muscle, and then it was Hotch who had to step outside to make the necessary phone calls. Gideon and Morgan exchanged a glance across the empty seat he vacated, and it was a glance full of both confusion and half-formed dread. As if the things they couldn't yet understand were looming out of the shadows, revealing contours they were not yet ready to examine.

Prentiss, JJ and Morgan arrived with Detective Finnerty and a forensic technician fifteen minutes later, at which point Reid was still being treated. A Dr. Sofer had been out to inform them that a full inventory had been made of his external injuries, but that they needed him conscious in order to determine whether he'd been hurt internally. He had lost large amounts of blood and had a fever that needed to be taken down, and x-rays had revealed a sprain in his wrist. His ankle, in turn, was covered in sores as if from a manacle, another injury that corresponded with the previous victims. They had counted nine second-degree burns, most of which were on his back and shoulders, and a flesh wound on his forearm was going to need stitches. Scatterings of shallow, less severe cuts along his spine and across his abdomen had been cleaned, and he had been administered antibiotics, a morphine drip and thermal blankets. A toxicology screen had been ordered and rushed, and a rape exam was next on the list.

The doctors still needed to bandage the wounds and treat his burns, but the technician would be sent in first to gather evidence and take photographs. In a display of subtlety the profilers weren't surprised to see, Finnerty had chosen a motherly-looking woman for the job, and she offered them all a warm, kind smile before disappearing through the doors. Reid would not be awake to see her, and the gesture was most likely meant for them as much as him. They didn't object.

The following hours were a peculiar mix of torturous waiting and abrupt activity. Chief Strauss and the district attorney came for a briefing, and a pair of uniformed officers joined them at Finnerty's request. What they were there for was unclear, but one of them was the officer who had found Reid. She was practically buckling under guilt and shame when confronted with them, and Morgan felt compelled to take her aside to explain exactly how she was without blame. Only minutes had been wasted on the misapprehension that Reid was dead, and in the relief of having their colleague back with them in more or less one piece, they hardly mattered.

At some point, they began to discuss the profile. It turned into a circuitous matter, returning them again and again to the dead ends that the night's events had proposed. The behavioral pattern they'd so far determined was no longer of use to them, and it soon became abundantly clear that they were profiling just to keep their misgivings at bay.

The technician spent a little over half an hour with Reid. By the time she came out to see them, Gideon, Prentiss and Garcia had gone back to the police station with a promise to return as soon as possible, and she fired off another friendly smile before giving them a brief description of her finds.

First of all, there was absolutely nothing that corresponded with the evidence found on the six previous victims.

"Because there was no evidence on the others," she muttered, shaking her head as she took a firmer grasp on her bag. "Apart from the blanket and the pants, there was also a great deal of material on his person. A whole host of fibers, among other things. I found black fabric under his fingernails, along with traces of blood."

"Wait a minute," Hotch said, raising an almost offended hand. "Blood?"

"Yup," the woman said, shaking her head again. "And his hands had some blood spatter on them that didn't look like it could've come from him."

There was a pause, and it was full of confusion.

"So either he injured the UnSub," JJ said, "or there was another victim there with him."

"My money would be on the former," the tech said. "The pattern suggests it landed directly on his hand, rather than being transferred there from somewhere else."

"Someone left him in that alley," Morgan said. "He didn't get there on his own. The UnSub must have an accomplice, or the injury wasn't serious."

"I think it was," the tech said. "There's quite a bit of blood. It didn't seep, it spurted. And because it was only partly smudged, I'd say he was very weak when it got there or it happened fairly close to the loss of consciousness. He didn't try to wipe it off."

Hotch was already on the phone, giving the order to check the hospitals for any patients fitting the profile who had recently come in with bleeding injuries; JJ sprinted out into the admittance area to check with the front desk for the same thing.

"The doctor also finished the rape kit," the tech said, nodding down at the bag in her hand. "I have it here. There were intact semen deposits, and they looked fresh. He didn't clean him inside, either, like he did with the others."

They digested this for a moment. Putting away his phone, Hotch said firmly, "Make sure that those samples get top priority. I want the results tonight."

She looked alarmed at this, but nodded obediently. "Of course."

Once they were satisfied with her report, they let her get the evidence back to the lab. Finnerty went with her.

JJ came back and, expectedly, there was no such patient here. Five minutes later, Garcia confirmed the same about the other hospitals. There was one man across town who was getting stitched up after an alleged bar fight, but upon closer inspection she had found that his blood alcohol was much too impressive – other than that, it had been a remarkably quiet night. As if the town had stilled around the culmination of the Stalker killings.

The doctors worked on Reid's burns for another hour, and when they were finally allowed to see him it was past one in the morning. Prentiss and Gideon were back by then, and Garcia was called as soon as they were told. Reid had been put in a room of his own, and they filed inside in a near reverent hush, as if reluctant to wake him even though they knew it wasn't yet possible.

"How is that tox screen coming along?" Gideon asked Dr. Sofer, who assured them that the results would be back in an hour or two.

"But if I had to guess," he added carefully, "I would say that he's been given some kind of tranquilizer. The puncture marks in his neck speak for themselves. Assuming he was down for less than an hour before getting here, I'd reckon he'll come around before the results do."

He left them with Reid, white coat billowing in the wake of his efficient stride. The lights in the room were bright and ruthlessly exposing, and there were only two chairs available. JJ went in search for more, and they grouped around the bed, looking down in silence on the unresponsive Reid.

He was on his stomach. The neck brace was gone, as were the thermal blankets, and the sheet that was drawn up to his waist lay folded from his left leg, where they were startled to see two more burns under white gauze in the large muscle of his thigh. The seven injuries on his back, shoulders and neck had been seen to in the same manner, and they could smell the pungent salve that had been used to treat them. Dr. Sofer had explained that they were minor and showed no signs of infection, but that the time that they had been allowed to go untreated made eventual scarring more likely. All in all, it was the considerable blood-loss that had been the most worrying, and a transfusion had redeemed that. Presently, his heartbeat was displayed on a monitor next to the bed, and the steady beep of it was very comforting. He was alive. Against all odds, he was alive.

And they had no idea why.

Over the next hour, at least two members of the team stayed with him at all times. They were coaxed out in order to make trips back to the police station or to take short naps in the seating area in the corridor outside. Coffee and candy bars were fetched to keep them awake, and Garcia came by with a heart-shaped balloon and a bouquet of sad, hospital-bought flowers.

It was she and Prentiss who were in the room when he came out of unconsciousness. It started with a slight increase in his heart rhythm, and then he was breathing heavily as his lids fluttered slowly open.

Morgan was the only other agent still at the hospital, and he was in the corridor with Officer Nuñez when Prentiss poked her head out the door and shouted his name. When she turned back to the bed, Reid was still trying to open his eyes. Garcia had punched the call button and was now on her feet, bent over to put her face level with Reid's.

"Reid? Come on, darling," she said anxiously, one hand hovering uncertainly over his shoulder. "Sugar, it's Penelope. We found you, you're safe."

Morgan came crashing through the door, and when he saw her face, saw the relief and joy and despair fighting for dominance under platinum-white bangs, he strode right over and put one arm around her.

"Give him some room," he murmured, and moments later Dr. Sofer and the nurse arrived.

"Step back, please," he said and positioned himself beside the bed. Unknowingly mimicking Garcia, he bent over to see his face; one hand was used to place a stethoscope between his shoulder blades while the other shone a light in his sluggishly blinking eyes. On the other side of him, where he couldn't see, the nurse slid a hand across his head to feel his brow.

It was this, it seemed, that first stirred a reaction. Drunkenly, he raised one arm to swat at the touch, fingers flexing to fight off the offending hand. His already labored breaths quickened, and a low, wordless moan cut through them like the growl of a cat. The nurse simply used her other hand to keep him still as she reached for the ear thermometer on a table behind her, and Reid let out another sound of protest, like a mishandled violin, this time, and writhed more insistently under her touch. Moving his head into the pillow, away from the glaring overhead light as if it hurt his eyes, the muscles in his back dancing nervously; both arms now moving he lashed out groggily for the nurse, who stepped back with a soft tut of disapproval, and tried, to the horror of everyone present, to push himself up off the bed.

When the doctor placed a firm palm on the uninjured part of his back, he turned his face upwards. Eyes wide open and clouded over with a dense, feral and completely deranged brand of panic.

Garcia let out a yelp, and Prentiss spoke sharply to Sofer and the nurse, "He thinks you're the man who abducted him. You need to back off."

Dr. Sofer looked up at her, but neither he nor the nurse relinquished their holds. "We need his vitals, agent."

She raised her hands in a pacific gesture. "I know that. But if you back off now, give him time to know where he is, it'll go much more smoothly. Trust me."

Adding impressive weight to her words, Reid chose this moment to grab the front of Sofer's coat. He had twisted his legs in such a way that the sheet had slipped sideways, revealing what looked like a hospital gown that was neatly tucked across his backside. Somebody had taken pity. Specks of blood stained the pale fabric, and Garcia let out another startled cry. After an equally startled pause, Morgan decided to lead her out of the room, leaving Prentiss to reason with Sofer.

"Please," she said earnestly. "You don't have to let him go, just let me talk to him." Fixing him with dark brown stare, she wore him down in a matter of seconds.

"Fine," he snapped and twitched his head in a motion for her to approach the bed. Reid kept struggling, kept snarling and yowling wordlessly, and when she dropped into a crouch next to the bed he didn't appear to see her at all. His teeth were bared, strangled breaths hissing through, and his eyes were glazed with flat incomprehension. It was like looking in the eyes of a cornered animal; there was nothing to relate to in there. Nothing in there remembered it was human. She forced herself to meet them nonetheless, and took a moment to devise a strategy.

"Reid," she said loudly, and a heartbeat later she clapped her hands together. Nothing. "Reid!" she shouted again. "Dr. Reid! Spencer!"

Above her, Sofer was thoroughly unimpressed. But just as he was about to order her out of his way, it did the trick. A glimmer of recognition took hold deep in Reid's eyes, and seconds later he was no longer struggling. He sort of sank into the bed, the whining growls of protests ceasing as if punctured, and simply breathed, swift and hurried gulps of air like he'd been running. The room went still. Morgan appeared in the doorway, cell phone in hand in spite of rules. Prentiss didn't dare even a glance his way but kept her eyes on Reid's, which were slowly clearing of their madness. Gestured subtly for Sofer and the nurse to let him go.

"Reid?"

A soft whimper, a slackening of his features as the panic receded. "Emily?"

Feeling a smile overtake her face, she nodded. Forced back a wave of emotions that was sure to reduce her to tears if she let it. "Yeah, it's me. You're in the hospital."

This took a moment to register. "Hospital? You…you found me?"

He tried to move, as if to sit up, but she put a hand on his arm. It wasn't the best move she could've made; he froze and sucked in a sharp gasp, but at least he stayed still.

"I'm sorry," she said and retrieved her hand. "You can't move. Your back is a mess."

"I know," he murmured, wetting cracked lips. "I'm thirsty."

The nurse passed Prentiss a mug of water with a straw, and she helped him get a couple of sips down.

Morgan had by now moved around the bed and placed himself behind her, while Garcia had taken up his spot in the doorway. Prentiss had never seen her look more terrified. Not even when Tobias Henkel had done what he did on an online live feed.

"Hey," Morgan greeted Reid softly. Blinking up at him for a moment, Reid breathed an identical response.

"Hey. You found me."

Morgan exchanged a glance with Prentiss, but neither of them corrected him. Now wasn't the time.

"The doctor needs to check your vitals," Prentiss told Reid, who once again had to mull over the words before they seemed to make sense.

"Okay," he whispered, and she got to her feet. Dr. Sofer pushed past her and caught Reid's eye. In a voice that was warm and reassuring but free of pity, he introduced himself and proceeded to tell Reid exactly what he was going to do before he did it. Reid appeared confused but relatively calm, and while he went stiff as a board under the doctor's hands he stayed perfectly still.

Once finished, Sofer took the nurse with him and left. Only now, they became aware of the sound of sirens again, the sound of the city outside. The three of them stood over Reid's bed for a moment as the stillness settled, and there was a distinct sense that there were too many people in the room. As if Reid took up much more space than his feather-weight frame ever could.

Without speaking, Morgan communicated to Prentiss that it should be he who stayed. She nodded silently, in complete agreement, and gave Reid the happiest smile she could muster before heading out into the corridor with Garcia. The door closed soundlessly behind them.

When Morgan sat down beside him, Reid was visibly fighting off whatever drug it was that had knocked him out. His lids kept falling shut, and his breathing was irregular.

"It feels like…the same thing," he muttered weakly, as if he'd been thinking along the same lines. "The same drug."

Morgan was quiet, sensing that he would do his best to get out whatever he needed to get out without instructions or encouragement. If he knew Reid at all, and he thought he did, it would be information. He took a deep, rattling breath, and sure enough –

"It was a basement."

His gaze was far away, now, and Morgan wasn't even aware of holding his breath.

"Four hundred…square feet. Painted white. There was a…toilet. And a sink. A shower. I don't think…there are building permits, though. They looked old. Eighties. An old bathroom. The house…could be the same age."

He squinted, as if trying to discern something in the distance. One of his hands was clutching the sheets. "He was…six foot one. 165 pounds. Blue…"

And his breath seemed to catch in his throat. Squeezing his eyes shut, he forced the words out. "Blue eyes. He had blue eyes. He was right-handed, and he had calluses…on one hand. On the fingertips. Like he plays an instrument. He…he was circumcised."

For a brief moment, Morgan had to close his own eyes. Silently, he let out his breath and tried not to move a muscle. Reid was thinking, was struggling to make his drugged mind work for him, and Morgan was convinced even the slightest movement would pose a threat to the process. He had gone to a different place, a dangerous place, where shadows lurked around every bend. How he had gathered the courage, how he had managed it so soon upon waking, was either an effect of the sedation or a sign of something Morgan had already suspected. Keeping your head on straight in the face of absolute terror wasn't something that came naturally to most people, and Morgan himself had acquired the ability only through training and experience.

Reid was a completely different story.

"There's something…else," he muttered. "I should remember…"

"There's no hurry, kid," Morgan said quietly, and even though it was a blatant lie Reid seemed calmed by it. He swallowed, seeming to burrow deeper into the darkness. Morgan was simultaneously grateful and frustrated that he couldn't be in there with him. Couldn't protect him. He knew better than anyone that no one could. No one had been in that dark place with Morgan himself, and no one could be in there with Reid. It was a place he would need to find the door to and close tight, all on his own.

"No, I…I know there's something," he whispered now, pulling the words from a sore and tired throat.

"Take your time."

"I am," he snapped; a glimpse of the know-it-all Morgan knew and loved. A second later it seemed to come to him, the darkness scattering as light suddenly flared.

Shifting his gaze to look up at Morgan, he was back inside himself, the place he'd forced himself to go retracting its venomous hold.

"Alabama," he muttered breathlessly.

Morgan frowned. According to the doctor, his fever had broken an hour ago – there was no reason for delirium.

"What?"

"His accent. I heard it … just for a moment. He'd trained it away, but I … I heard it."

"Wait," Morgan said, not quite following. "He had a Southern accent?"

"That's … that's what I said. Alabama. Northeast … Appalachian."

"Are you sure?"

Dark eyes looked into his. They were still Reid's, but something else was in there, too. Or something wasn't. He couldn't tell which.

"I'm positive."

* * *

Death came slowly. It took its sweet time, and he couldn't for the life of him understand why. In reality it was a matter of hours, no more than two, but in the rank and cold light of the basement it felt like days. An eternity and more. He could have lived another life in its endless, glacial pace.

His neck bled steadily, draining his strength little by little, and it wasn't long before he could no longer think straight. Once he had lowered his brow to the cold floor, once he was resting in utter stillness, the workings of his mind began to deviate from the chosen path. Began to spiral out into the atmosphere, out into the overgrown trails he had walked throughout this life and left behind. It was a drawn-out version of what was supposed to flash before his eyes. It passed him by with the same steady languidness that was bleeding him dry, pumping it out through the hole the doctor had opened in his neck.

_You know they all say that. You're kidding yourself._

There was his mother, they way he remembered her when she was still worth remembering, cowering under his father's drunken, swaying form. The sight of her blood was such an early memory that he had never trusted it to be real. He couldn't recall his father's face at all, but now he saw the back of the man's neck, thick and stubbly and the color of burnished amber. He remembered staring into that neck, remembered watching vigilantly for any inclination to turn around and direct that bottomless rage at his son rather than his wife. There was no fear in the memory. No anger. There was nothing there at all.

The funeral, crowded and full of tall, black-clad people he didn't know. He was still small, still a child – had he truly been that young?

His other father, the first one's complete opposite. A stepbrother. Wild and curly hair in the shade of a red dusk, long and thin limbs moving with an awkward grace that suggested he paid them no attention. Jonah. Jonah Christopher Jones.

He had taken him in the dead of night, with the adults sleeping in the next room. He had been brave, he hadn't cried. Afterwards he'd said the predator's name before he fell asleep, Mikey, Mikey, Mikey. So many such nights, so many that they had blurred into one.

Other lovers, frightened faces as they suspected or learned what he was. What he wanted. His mother, a strange and formless image at a kitchen table in early morning light, as she told him she could see his father in his eyes. Had he been angered by the comparison? Couldn't remember. Couldn't…

The first time he had put a blade to milk white skin came slicing through the rest, and a quaking shiver overtook him. Bright red, dripping onto his hand, and the trembling body under his touch, the fearful voice that pleaded with him to stop. The rearing need as he ravaged him, the music of his own moans mingling with the whimpers and cries below. That was the moment when he fully understood who he was, when he knew himself completely. It was like he had gazed into a mirror his whole life without seeing himself – now he saw it, now the image came together.

After that, his life had steadily taken him back to this destiny, had returned him to the inevitable realization that it was time to live and not just survive. Again and again, he had found himself looking at that image without recognizing it, and again and again he had been compelled to set it right. He had the tools and the intelligence, and there was no reason to refuse. He was blessed with the power and the will to delve into his true self and fulfill it.

And so it had led him here. The fates had rid him of the barriers that others went through life surrounded by, and they had guided him to this very moment in time and to this very place. With a broken heart and an empty soul he relived the last remnants of his destiny, already out of his grasp, and awaited his death. His end. The circle of his life coming to a close.

The doctor was with him, then, his memory so sharp and clear that he was momentarily convinced it would end right then, in a tumbling flash of regret and desire. The ones before him, all of them so breathlessly beautiful. Him, the most beautiful. A flower of them all.

With the feel of him so near and so true, with his memory locked safely in his heart, he became suddenly aware of death's presence. It had found him.

It was here.

It came from above, silent and smooth like a pouncing panther, and he knew in the heartbeats before it was upon him that he was as ready as he was ever likely to be. He could feel its intrusion as it approached, could hear it as footfalls above, could smell it as a mix of fresh air, metal and sweat. Lifting his head from the floor, he sat up on his knees and waited for it to reach him. Patient as ever.

It was through the basement door, then it was slithering down the stairs. The snake deceiving its way into paradise. When it spoke, its voice was eager and hungry, full of murderous urges that he knew all too well.

"Michael Ray Jones."

"Yes," the predator said, raising his hands in the air before death could ask him to. "That's my name. I've been waiting for you."

He could hear it breathing now, heavy and hoarse. "Get up," it said. The predator gathered the strength to obey, well aware that death could not be reasoned with, and climbed slowly to his feet.

"What took you so long?" he asked it, hearing amusement in his own voice. "I was beginning to think you wouldn't make it."

"Shut up," death said, and now it was right behind him. He could feel its rabid breath on his neck, and then warm hands were grasping him, pulling his arms down. The click of metal, and icy cold steel wrapped around his wrists one at a time.

"Michael Ray Jones, you are under arrest."

* * *

A fifth day dawned crisp and clear, with a thin sheet of mist hovering just out of reach. The city was silent in the hushed hours before the sun appeared in the sky, waiting reverently for its illuminating light. As though absolution would come with that light and drape the land in truth. There was very little traffic, and only a handful of people had been kept awake by the sirens that had quieted shortly before three a.m. Of those that were awake at this hour, several ascribed the racket to the discovery of another dead boy, and the news stations were in full capacity, trying to make sense of the confused, inadequate information they had so far managed to glean from their sources. As far as they could tell, no body had been found, but other significant developments had taken place. Exactly what they were was yet to de determined, but soon enough there would be just barely amount of time before the morning issues went to print to incorporate the front page news that a suspect was in custody. The picture painted would be one of sensational triumph, with blurry, bad photographs of the FBI profilers taken outside one of the city's downtown emergency rooms, blown up to show the victorious heroes who had made the arrest. That the Stalker's most recent victim had been found alive would not reach the public until the next day, and his name would never make it into a single newspaper. An insidious process would be set in motion on the faceless field of the internet, where each and every rumor of the kidnapped agent's identity was slowly and unnoticeably smothered by a formidable player whose skills had landed her a job that allowed her to do it legally. The discussion would vanish altogether, and among the morbid laymen who would spend time and energy dissecting the case of the Riverside Stalker, it would soon be considered common knowledge that the information in question was impossible to obtain. They would warn each other not to try, for tall were the walls that the FBI built around their own.

David Malcolm awoke that morning to find the street outside crammed with cars and a small crowd. He didn't notice it until he went downstairs to make coffee, and when his eyes drifted through the window he dropped the mug he was holding. It clattered into the sink, unharmed, but the sound roused him from his shock and urged him to move before giving it even a second thought. Padding barefoot to the front door, he stepped into his flip-flops and went outside.

Later, he wouldn't be able to say exactly why he'd felt such a need to leave the house, in his pajamas no less. He just knew that, whatever had happened, it was as far from good as it could possibly get.

The chilly morning air hit him like a pressure wave, making him shiver violently, and he spent a glance on the unexpected mist before pacing slowly into the street. Reluctantly, he accepted that the house the commotion was centered around was number twenty-four. Moments later the horrible suspicion took root that he should have trusted his instincts.

Still hoping he was wrong, he came to a halt at the rear of the crowd that lined a yellow plastic ribbon. Up close, he saw that most of the people gathered there lived on the street. Finding a familiar face, he sidled up to number sixteen.

"What's going on?"

Number sixteen turned a worried look his way. "No idea. They won't say. But those marshmallow suits they're wearing…"

David followed his gaze back to the front of the house, where police cars and two SUVs and a silver Chevy crowded the sidewalk. A white van rose out of their midst, and to and fro from it trickled people in white, baggy overalls.

"They look like the ones on 'CSI'," number sixteen finished, and David was inclined to agree with him. Unless he was less savvy than he liked to think, Jones' house was a crime scene.

"The guy who lives there," he said, and was surprised to hear the fear in his voice, "have you seen him?"

"No," came the puzzled reply. "My wife said there was an ambulance here before, though."

"Was the siren on?"

"What?" Turning to look at David again, number sixteen furrowed his brow in confusion. "I don't know. Why d'you ask that?"

"Well," David said, "If it wasn't, someone's dead, right?"

Number sixteen stared at him for a moment, before giving a nervous shrug and sidling away from him. David didn't watch him go, his eyes on the people on the other side of the police ribbon. There were uniformed officers, a whole host of them, but the presence of a number of official-looking characters in black suits told him as clear as day that he had not been wrong, after all. The only business the FBI had in town was with the man who had murdered six people. With a start, he even caught sight of the blonde who had held that press conference. She looked tired.

Liddy's scoffing words came back to him, and he was glad to learn that he didn't feel even the slightest inkling of excitement at the prospect of telling her that she had, for once, been wrong. Staring up at the house he had lived across the street from for longer than he presently cared to recall, he made a silent vow to get off his ass and give her that stupid ring before it was too late.

* * *

He didn't know what he'd been expecting to see.

If pressed to answer, he might have said _nothing_. Just a nobody, a nondescript, unremarkable nonentity. He had seen so many of those, both face to face and in the pages of books and files and articles. It was by all accounts one of the most efficient weapons you could have at your disposal if your inclination was to commit serial murder. Dull and drab, polite and boring, forgettable. A guarantee that no one would look twice at you, never mind suspect you of being responsible for something so memorable. Obviously there were exceptions, as to any rule – one that had been seen more than once was that of the handsome killer. Bundy was the most famous example. They were suave and charming and thereby evaded suspicion almost as efficiently as the grey little men who were just as depraved. If pressed to answer, Reid might have said that the man in the hospital bed in front of him fit in somewhere between the two.

He was still under from the anesthesia, which was the only reason Reid felt safe to be anywhere near the room he'd been stowed away in. It was smaller than Reid's and lit up like a stadium – the lights were as glaring as the basement had been, a fact Reid felt vaguely panicked over for no clear reason. He had always feared the dark, but in the hours since finding himself in the hospital he'd been increasingly drawn to it, palpably averse to the ever-present, glaring light of the institutional lamps. The shadows were safer.

Other than this, he was fairly numb. Once the drugs had left his system, he had been a zombie, barely able to look at anyone and even less empowered in the art of conversation. Words were a sudden nuisance, which was an unfamiliar sensation. Overall, everything was unfamiliar, even the team. It was like he'd never seen them before, only just beginning to attach their faces and voices to his subconscious. Like they were strangers. During the night they had all been understandably busy, and he felt immeasurably guilty for the gratitude he'd experienced for this. Of the six of them, Garcia and Gideon had been around the most, the former due to the sudden absence of urgent tasks to perform and the latter for reasons Reid didn't know nor cared to learn.

Physically, he was still in bad shape, and he thought the inner goings-on would have been far more chaotic if he hadn't been in so much pain. The morphine drip had at his request been removed hours ago, and he could feel every single wound like they had voices of their own. Screeching, supersonic voices. He could stand up straight without assistance, but it made his whole body reverberate with agony with every beat of his heart. Currently, it was pounding against his ribs as if set on reducing them to dust, which didn't help at all.

"Do you want to leave?"

The voice startled him; he had forgotten Gideon was there. Looking over his shoulder to where he stood in the doorway, he swallowed and took a steadying breath.

"No, I…why?"

Eagle eyes soft and watchful, the older agent spoke quietly. "You were moaning."

Reid blinked. Unconsciously drew his hospital bathrobe tighter about himself. "I was?"

Gideon raised his eyebrows in silent assent. "You sounded like you were in pain."

_I am,_ he thought, but didn't have the energy to voice it. Gideon didn't seem to care if Reid answered him, though, and he had to admit it was comforting to hear the complete absence of pity in his voice. He talked to him like he always did.

"We were off on his age," he muttered now, stroking his chin pensively as he gazed towards the bed. "Just by three years, but it's still noteworthy. He looks even younger."

Reid released a slow breath. Tore his eyes from Gideon and looked back at the figure on the bed. Michael Ray Jones was not as handsome as Ted Bundy, but nor was he by any standards drab and dull. His dark brown hair was thick and coarse, and even after the three-hour surgery that had repaired the damage in his neck you could see that it was cut in a spiky, tousled style that probably didn't require much upkeep. A dark stubble currently shadowed his cheeks, but he was otherwise beardless and blemish-free, with a clear complexion that was completely devoid of wrinkles and which made him look no older than twenty-five. He had a thin face, with high cheekbones and a softly aquiline nose, and his brow was high and smooth, giving him a vaguely intellectual appearance. He was attractive, Reid supposed, in a brooding kind of way. They had been informed he was in excellent health, which had been a major contributor to the success of his surgery.

It should probably have been strange, seeing him helpless in a hospital bed. Reid knew he should be putting it into perspective, should be outmaneuvering the image of the towering black shape in the black mask to make room for this, this…human being. But all he could really think, even if he put his mind to it, was that he had looked bigger in the basement. Not much bigger, but bigger. It was likely due to the fact that he'd been on the floor most of the time. A child's vantage point.

Staring at his attacker from an all but nonexistent distance of five feet, Reid could feel the panic like a hand around his heart. Even in the numbness, even in a world that had gone oddly muffled and colorless, he felt it. Like he was still in that basement. He knew it would be a while before it faded, and even longer before it never came back. If he'd been any less cut off, if he'd had any of the profiler's instincts left, he would've had the presence of mind to be at least anxious about the recovery process he would have to face. But the profiler inside him was finally still, and he couldn't think much further ahead than the moment when he'd be out of this room and back in his bed. Distantly, he longed for when he could be out of the hospital altogether, something he'd been told would happen today. Why they'd been forced to take Jones here at all was beyond him, but he couldn't be bothered to be upset about it; it would've made no difference if he'd been on the other side of the city.

There were no windows in the room, but he knew the sun had come up. Dawn was here. His first, in many ways. This day would pass, and there would be a tomorrow. A luxury he hadn't had just a few hours ago.

Taking a step back from the man who had done his best to destroy him, he turned his back and looked at Gideon.

"I'm done," he told him. Gideon gave the smallest of nods.

"Come on," he said and held out his arm. "I brought my chessboard. We've got time for a game before you get out of here."

* * *

AN: If you want more, the sequel is called _"Broken Things"_.


End file.
